New Student Design Competition Launched

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 29 September, 2009 -- The IEEE Computer Society is launching a new design competition for undergraduates with prizes totaling $10,000. The purpose of the competition is to promote excellence. Teams of three to five undergraduates will be invited to design a CPU simulator, a program used in many architecture courses to illustrate how computers work.

“This is an exciting competition because it cuts across traditional boundaries by combining architecture with program design and software engineering – just like real life,” said Alan Clements, Vice President and Chair of the Educational Activities Board and a professor of computer science at the University of Teesside in the UK. “All you have to do is to write a program. Well, that’s not quite all. You have to write an excellent program using professional design techniques.”

The competition will require the skills of students who have taken a course in architecture and the skills of programmers and software engineers who can turn a specification into a working program. At the end of the competition, teams will submit both a report and a working program.

The competition will last several months. The top 10 teams will be selected and awarded certificates of achievements. These 10 teams will be free to participate in the final stage of the competition, when they will be competing against each other for four prizes.

Judging will be carried out according to the following criteria:
o Originality of the architecture designed
o Functionality, quality, and versatility of the simulator
o The use of software engineering in the design of the simulator

Prizes of $1,000 will be awarded to the winning team in each of these categories and a prize of $7,000 will be awarded to the overall winning team. No team will be judged an overall winner unless their use of software engineering in the design and creation of the simulator is deemed high quality.

In order to help students get started, a FAQ website will be set up to give teams a better idea of what is expected. For additional information, contact Clements at alanclements@ntlworld.com.

About the IEEE Computer Society

With nearly 85,000 members, the IEEE Computer Society is the world’s leading organization of computing professionals. Founded in 1946, and the largest of the 39 IEEE societies, the Computer Society is dedicated to advancing the theory and application of computer and information-processing technology. The Society serves the information and career-development needs of today’s computing researchers and practitioners with technical journals, magazines, conferences, books, conference publications, certifications and online courses.