Our goal is to:
- to provide a foundation for understanding how computer systems work from a software and hardware perspective,
- demystify the complex layers of software and hardware that make up the world around us, and
- learn a new set of technical competencies.
The course roughly breaks down into 4 major parts as follows:
- Processor Architecture Learning how computers compute and building up the parts of a simple CPU processor, from digital logic to an instruction set and a processor pipeline.
- Assembly Language and the Foundations of Software: Learning the binary model of a computer and binary representation of software, through assembly programming.
- Towards High-Level Programming Languages: Learning how we bridge the binary model and representation to a human-friendly programming model, through the ``C'' programming language tool-chain.
- Improvements to System Performance: Learning how modern systems run efficiently through using methods such as pipelining, caching, and virtual memory management.
CS 210 is a principal course for computer science majors. It provides the fundamental knowledge to understand what software and hardware are. It is also the background for courses in the systems area such as operating systems, compilers, networks, not to mention more advanced courses in computer architecture.
This course assumes that students have a solid background in programming concepts from CAS CS 111. CS 112 is also required. CS 131 or MA 293 is important for the material on Boolean logic and data representation.