Nintendo DS: A Pedagogical Approach to Teach Computer Architecture Maria J. Santofimia 1 , and Francisco Moya 1 1 Computer Architecture and Networks Group. School of Computer Science, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real,Spain Abstract— This work reveals the benefits obtained from an innovative pedagogical experience based on the use of a game console as the platform to teach Computer Architec- ture. This paper shows how the selection of an appropriate platform, not only motivates students, but also helps them to acquire the theoretical concepts by means of real appli- cations. The Nintendo DS console turns out to be a great platform to explore the structure and organization of a fully equipped computer. In this regard, a brief description of the lab sessions is presented to highlight the great potentialities of this platform. Keywords: Computer Architecture education, Nintendo DS. 1. Introduction Nowadays, the use of electronic devices is commonly extended to almost all facets of human life. The increasing capabilities along with their decreasing prices, provide an appealing field to be exploited for educational purposes. Educational games or applications for computers and con- soles have succeeded in improving knowledge acquisition and retention as well as motivation in short-age students. Video-game companies have targeted the educational market by means of devices that provide learning and teaching facilities to both teachers and students. Although universities are not unaware of the potentialities of such facilities, the high level knowledge taught or the self-motivation supposed to students do not provide the same appealing context for educational games, as the primary or secondary education. The pedagogical value of these new platforms and devices is granted by the running applications and not so much by the platform on which they run. The majority of the first year students in Computer Science suddenly find themselves dealing with new concepts that require some level of abstraction. Courses such as Com- puter Architecture, taught on the second semester of the first year is aimed at providing students with the foundations to understand the internal organization of a computer, analyze the different functional units, as well as comprehend the role they play in the execution of instructions. Hands-on experience turns out to be essential in showing how theory is applied. In this regard, the use of simple com- puter architecture emulators is the most extensive approach for this purpose. However, this approach fails on concreting theoretical concepts into real ones. On the one hand, it is desired to count on an architecture simple enough to allow students to focus their attention on the course objectives, and not on understanding the complex aspects of a particular architecture. However, if the architecture is too simple, it might truncate student progress and motivation due to the limited possibilities to experiment with it. Therefore, the architecture used needs to be complex enough to allow students to experiment with all the theoretical knowledge acquired during lectures, but at the same time, simple enough to keep the focus on the structure and organization and not in complex aspects. A few years ago, the School of Computer Science, at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, undertook the in- novative teaching experience of using the PIC16F84 from Microchip[1] microcontroller for the lab sessions of the Computer Architecture course. Some of the most appealing features supporting this innovative experience were its 8 bit architecture, a simple RISC instruction set, Flash, EEPROM and RAM memory, the variety of I/O peripherals, and its low cost. However, when adopting the use of the PIC16F84 microcontroller, it soon becomes apparent that this approach fails to address most of student expectations. Advanced stu- dents found the platform insufficient to explore the advanced concepts learnt in lectures. On the contrary, beginner stu- dents tend to be overwhelmed by the requirements imposed by the platform, missing the point of the lab sessions. The use of a microcontrollers, such as the PIC16F84, might be suitable to address those aspects related to the embedded systems design, but it is not an optimal choice for the Computer Architecture course. This paper presents the shortages identified in the teaching of the Computer Architecture course, as well as the proposed solution to help students to acquire the concepts and over- come the identified deficiencies. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. First section presents the reasons why the PIC16F84 approach failed in achieving the course objectives. The following sec- tion exposes the foundations of the Nintendo DS (NDS from now on) based proposal. Finally, the last section summarizes the conclusions obtained from both approaches.