In this course, each student usually selects a different architecture than the exemplar being studied in detail, researches one or a few aspects of that second architecture, and writes a short paper and/or presents a talk to the class and other interested persons. Recent topics have included the following.

• Alpha and Itanium Architecture: A Broad Comparison
• AMD's x86-64 Architecture and the Intel IA-64
• IA-32 Overview
• Making Home Computers More Effective: Intel's IA-32 SIMD Instructions
• The POWER4 Architecture
• The SPARC v9 Extensions for 64-Bit Computing
• Development of a GPU Architecture

Students generally view this assignment with enthusiasm and put considerable effort into it.