Revision as of 16:04, 25 June 2008

CSC 103: How Computers Work

First half of Fall 2008

The Most Complex Machine., by David Eck, A. K. Peters, Natick Ma [1]

Book chapters

Chapter 1: What Computers can do. Must read
Chapter 2: (read 2.1) computing with Silicon. Arithmetic, circuits
Chapter 3: (read 3.1 and 3.3) Building computers
Chapter 4: Theoretical computers. Computational universality in Section 4.1 is important
Chapter 5: History of computers
Chapter 6: Programming: basic concepts (variables, loops, decisions)
Chapter 7: Programming Methodology for building large programs
Chapter 8: Programming Languages
Chapter 9: Applications
Chapter 10: Cooperating Computers. Parallelism and networks
Chapter 11: Graphics: math, realistic images
Chapter 12: AI

Week 2:
- Chapter 2, binary system, arithmetic, logic gates
- Chapter 2, logic gates, binary adder

Week3:
- Chapter 4, NP, solvability, towers of hanoi
- History of computers, video "Machine that changed the world", Loom, Craig.

Week 4:
- Building a computer, von Neuman architecture, bottleneck, CPU, RAM, Secondary Memory, Suse EEE
- Programming: Javascript

@@ Line 25: / Line 25: @@
 *Week 1:
-**Chapter 1, general introduction
+** Chapter 1, general introduction
 *Week 2:
@@ Line 36: / Line 36: @@
 * Week 4:
-**
+** Building a computer, von Neuman architecture, bottleneck, CPU, RAM, Secondary Memory, Suse EEE
+** Programming: Javascript
+* Week 5:
+** Programming: Javascript
+** Programming: Javascript
+* Week 6:
+** Programming: other languages (Macros?)
+** Singularity, AI
+* Week 7:
+** Advanced material