Well, I've seen it taught that a "computer architecture" is really the CPU's instruction set (i.e. ISA, instruction set architecture), without particular regard

Well, I've seen it taught that a "computer architecture" is really the CPU's instruction set (i.e. ISA, instruction set architecture), without particular regard for the specific performance (e.g. in terms of clock cycles) or implementation. And that was from the CS side of the school ... (Also seems to be the line at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_architecture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_architecture )