Computer Architecture

Computer Architecture is David Wentzlaff's Princeton course on the design of modern processors, pitched at advanced level. Its twenty-one modules begin with a review of instruction set architecture, microcode, pipelining and caches, then cover superscalar execution and exceptions over four modules, VLIW, branch prediction, advanced caches, memory protection, vector processors and GPUs, multithreading, parallel programming, small multiprocessors, multiprocessor interconnects and large multiprocessors with directory protocols. Coursera labels it advanced level with a flexible schedule and estimates five weeks at ten hours a week.

The course page states that all the features of the course are available for free and that it does not offer a certificate upon completion, consistent with Princeton's policy of awarding no credentials for its open courses. Because it assumes an undergraduate computer-architecture background, learners new to the topic should expect to do outside reading alongside the lectures.