Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

This course discusses computer systems, which is defined on Wikipedia as: A “complete” computer that includes the hardware, operating system (software), and peripheral equipment needed and used for “full” operation. We can view the concept of a computer system as having several levels of abstraction:

Level 7: The Application Level This level represents the applications that run on the computer system. We will discuss the idea of information abstraction and binary representation.

Level 6: The High-Order Language Level This level represents programming in a high level language.

Level 5: Assembly Level This level represents the computer at the assembly level; assembly language is the conduit between high-order programming languages and the machine code execution.

Level 4: Operating System Level This level discusses how operating systems work, and focuses on process management and storage management on a computer system.

Level 3: Instruction Set Architecture Level This level discusses the specific instructions that a computer can execute to perform its tasks. Assembly language will allow us to access these instructions directly.

Level 2: Microcode Level This level discusses other types of computer architectures.

Level 1: Logic Gate Level This level discusses how the computer’s circuits are created and operated.

Student Outcomes

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to do the following:

  • Understand numbers and characters expressed in binary, octal, and hexadecimal, and convert numbers between binary, decimal, hexadecimal, and octal
  • Describe the fetch-execute cycle of a computer
  • Solve simple problems and write programs in machine language
  • Solve problems and write programs in assembly language, including translating high-order computer code into assembly language.
  • Describe how the computer handles multiple processes simultaneously, and solve problems involving deadlocks
  • Describe how the computer handles storage and file manipulation

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