Computers are everywhere, in industry, academia, governance, and many other activities that impact our society. But what are they? How do they work? How to analyze them and to improve their performance?
Matching the requirements of the IEEE/ACM CS Curriculum (first draft, then newer versions through strawman until the final version of 2023), topics for this course include: the architecture, the structure, the operation and the interconnection of computer components into computer systems, including modern architectures, data representation, assembler programming, virtual machines, the structure of translators, compiling and loading, basic operating systems concepts (I/O, interrupt handling, process).
This course is a precursor of the VU course on Systems Architecture.
This course uses gamification.
