CSC103 Weekly Schedule Spring 2012

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Office Hours: M 1:10-3:00 p.m., W 4:00-6:00 p.m.

Weekly Schedule

Week	Topics	Reading
Week 1 1/30	Monday Introduction to the class and the 1/2 semester Organization of the class a short movie to get the discussion started... some examples of computers: (start at 1min 47sec) Keywords: code: Translating from one system of values to another system. Electricity The Binary System: a system where the only two numbers available are 0 and 1. Every operation that we can do in decimal, with 10 digits, we can also do in binary. The Transistor: A switch controlled by electricity. Two giants for computer science: George Boole (1779-1848): logic expression = boolean expression. Logic: creating formulas where variables are combined by operators. The variables are boolean variables, the operators are logic operators. Any formula can be represented with a combination of just three operators: AND, OR, and NOT. Claude Shannon (1916-2001): writes a Master's thesis at MIT in 1948, which states that any binary numerical computation can be performed using logic expressions and logic operators. Wednesday Review of the binary system Exercises on binary (and other) systems and Logic George Boole (1779-1848): logic expression = boolean expression. Logic: creating formulas where variables are combined by operators. The variables are boolean variables, the operators are logic operators. Any formula can be represented with a combination of just three operators: AND, OR, and NOT. Claude Shannon (1916-2001): writes a Master's thesis at MIT in 1948, which states that any binary numerical computation can be performed using logic expressions and logic operators. Homework #1	Reading Primary: Video (Part 2) on George Boole and Boolean Algebra. (5.18 min) Shannon's MIT Thesis, and boolean theory Counting in Binary Counting in binary for beginners Secondary: DT's Notes
Week 2 2/6	Monday we stopped last week at Shannon's Master's Thesis (MIT). building a 2-bit adder with logic gates. Two-bit adder (verify the equations with this exercise Logic Gates Data sheet for the AND gate. Data sheet for the NOT gate. Data sheet for the OR gate. Logic Design Simulator Lab #1 Wednesday Schematics from NASA Exercise on Logic Design: a review of the process of going from a description of the function to a circuit. Identifying various parts inside a computer. We want to be able to recognize: The processor The Crystal The Random Access Memory (RAM) The power supply The mother board The hard disk The optical disk (DVD/CD player/burner) The Wiring Various Ports Creating a wiki page on the ClassWiki system (owned by the Smith CS Department) headers paragraphs boxes lists (numbered or not) images links to other wiki pages in classwiki links to Web pages Warning: Two wikis! Lab #1: Logic Design Homework #2: Logic Design, and homework solution.	Reading: Logic Gates on wikipedia: You can skip the Universal Logic Gate section, the De Morgan section, and the remaining sections until the end. A good introduction on the Logic Circuit Simulator (from Lab #1) A "HowTo" document for creating simple Wiki pages
Week 3 2/13	Monday: Let's Take-Apart a PC lab. Ford Hall Foyer. Pictures can be found on the CS Facebook page How hard disks work: Disassembling a PC: Wednesday Microprocessor and Assembly Language Let's play a game the xComputer Simulator the Instruction Set for our computer A first program A second program Execution of selected instructions (pdf) Homework #3 and Solution	Reading: A good description of the Computer simulator You will find Wikipedia's description of the processor interesting. Concentrate mostly on the sections labeled Microprocessor, Operation, and Clock Rate.
Week 4 2/20	Monday Execution of selected instructions (pdf) ASCII Table: even characters are stored in computers as numbers! Example of a real assembly language program. Von Neuman using wolfram alpha for calculations Exercises Lab on Assembly Language Wednesday Hot off the presses: DNA computing back in the news von Neumann's bottleneck John von Neumann First video: history of computers, Part 2, narrated by Gordon Bell. Advance to 37 min 50 sec, on the IAS "chapter". the von Neumann bottleneck Memory vs. processor. What do fingernails and football fields have in common? Attempts to circumvent the bottleneck cache memory multicore architectures Assembly Language Lab Homework 4 and Solution program	Reading Primary Jon von Neumann, who first defined the architecture of modern computers. We are still building computers according to his original unpublished draft Secondary von Neumann's draft new research in DNA computing: we are trying hard to find new ways to perform computation and leave the von Neumann architecture. DT's Notes
Week 5 2/27	Monday Moore's Law Difference between linear and log scales Introduction to Processing Wednesday Processing Lab in FH 241 Processing Lab and Solution sketches lab Homework #5 and solution program	Primary: Moore's Law in wikipedia What is a programming language? on wikipedia C. Reas, B. Fry, Processing: programming for the media arts, AI & Soc (2006) 20: 526–538 The Learning Processing page on processing.org Secondary Moore's Law may soon be broken
Week 6 3/5	Monday Projects in Processing: Review of the solution sketches for the last lab. Review of past homework assignment solutions: Homework #4 Solution The Singularity: Introduction (pdf) Wednesday Quiz on two papers Class discussion: The singularity. Hod Lipson Hard Computer Problems Hard Computer Problems. Example "Towers of Hanoi" and applet (this stop-watch can be useful to time the execution of the program). Food for thought... Additional articles on the issue of the Singularity (including IEEE Spectrum issue on the subject). Susan Blackmore's TED talk on Memes and Temes. Final Exam	Primary Signs of the Singularity by Vernor Vinge. Can Machine Be Conscious?, Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi. Secondary NP-Hard Computer-Science Problems
Week 7 3/12	Take Home Exam Week
Week 7 3/19	Spring Break

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