Courses in Computer Architecture and Organization
are regularly included in Computer Engineering curricula. These
courses are usually organized in such a way that students obtain
not only a purely theoretical experience, but also a practical understanding
of the topics lectured. This practical work is usually
done in a laboratory using simulators of computer systems. Since
the open literature contains a variety of simulators being used for
such purposes, this paper attempts to give a survey of simulators
suitable for teaching courses in computer architecture and organization,
to establish the evaluation criteria and to evaluate selected
simulators according to these criteria.