CSC 103: How Computers Work

Schedule

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:
- Building a computer
  - von Neuman architecture
  - Von Neuman bottleneck
  - CPU, RAM, Secondary Memory
  - Case Study: the Suse EEE, and the switch from magnetic to semiconductor storage
- History of computers
  - video "Machine that changed the world"
  - Loom, Craig.

Week 4:
- Client/Server architecture.
  - Trends.
  - Services.
  - Google vs. Microsoft
- Programming: Javascript

Week 6:
- Programming: other languages (Macros?)
- Chapter 4, NP, solvability, towers of hanoi