433-251 Computer Organisation

Note

When taken from School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering: 7.1. When taken from Computer Science, Faculty of Science: 6.25

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

433-142 or 433-162

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

The objective of this subject is for students: to understand the general concepts involved in the structure and organisation of computer systems; to be familiar with the architecture of one specific system and be able to write small programs for this system in assembly language; to understand the basic concepts of digital logic; and to be familiar with various standard combinational circuits and to be able to design small combinational and sequential circuits.

Topics covered include: Modern computer organisation: CPU, bus and memory, secondary storage, input/output device interaction. Fundamental principles: logic gates, basic boolean algebra and binary arithmetic. Digital circuits, including combinational (no memory) and sequential (with memory) circuits. Basics in the implementation of memory. Buses. Introduction to assembly language programming. Translation of high level languages to assembler.

Assessment

One written examination not exceeding three-hours at the end of the subject. Project work, which is expected to take about 30 hours must be completed satisfactorily to pass the subject. Weighting of assessment components will be made known at the commencement of the subject