Favorite class at Purdue. Walked away from this class a true computer engineer and with a newfound passion for computer architecture. Very heavy workload, you can expect this class to take up several hours or even dozens per week. If you want to do computer design as a career, it's worth every second.

CPU design. Lab starts with building a simple singe-cycle processor in 4 weeks. The next eight labs are focused on improving this CPU using pipelining, caches, and multi-core functionality. Lectures cover lab content along with virtual memory and computer arithmetic.

Extremely passionate about computer architecture and will change your outlook on what you want to do with your career. Very good lectures but he expects you to put in lots of your own time into the course to do well.

Don't slack on the labs, especially the milestone labs (4, 7, 9, 12). If you start with only a day or two left, you will not finish. Start labs a week in advance. Make full use of office hours.