A Survey and Evaluation of Simulators Suitable for Teaching Courses in Computer Architecture and Organization

Courses in Computer Architecture and Organization are regularly included in Computer Engineering curricula. These courses are usually organized in such a way that students obtain not only a purely theoretical experience, but also a practical understanding of the topics lectured. This practical work is usually done in a laboratory using simulators of computer systems. Since the open literature contains a variety of simulators being used for such purposes, this paper attempts to give a survey of simulators suitable for teaching courses in computer architecture and organization, to establish the evaluation criteria and to evaluate selected simulators according to these criteria.