This project is improving the undergraduate computer science curriculum through the development of the new Experimental Computer Science Laboratory (ECSL), which is dedicated to experimental work in the systems design area. The project is developing laboratory experiments for three undergraduate courses in computer architecture, operating systems/systems programming, and network security. The ECSL is an experimental facility where students can get practical experience with performance measurement and the analysis of computer hardware, system software, and networks. Students can also experiment with software monitors, workload tracers and generators, benchmarks, and advanced simulation and visualization tools. Students are gaining experience with dynamic phenomena such as page faults, system and networks saturation, pipeline stalls, system bottlenecks, and cache thrashing. The new laboratory is enhancing activities that have previously been severely restricted because of a laboratory timeshare with courses in the software design area. The project is establishing the ECSL as an isolated independent subnet with eight Sun Sparc 5 workstations, a Sparc server, and a DEC Alpha server. *
