Computer Organization

Catalog description

Introduction to computer organization. ALU, registers, memory, controller, system bus, and basic I/O devices. Introduction to binary/octal/hexadecimal/floating-point numbers. Introduction to assembly language concepts and common opcode types and memory access modes. Conceptual execution of sample assembly language programs. Machine instruction execution cycle and interrupt processing for supporting mouse/keyboard/communications. Memory hierarchy including registers, cache, main memory, and hard disks. Concepts of controller implementation with microprogramming. CISC vs. RISC architecture. Computer organization vs. computer architecture. Pipelined machine instruction execution. Introduction to parallel processing.