COMP 228 Concordia - System Hardware
Course Rating
A summary of what how I would personally rate the course based the following metrics.
| Metric | Rating |
|---|---|
| Course Complexity | ▮▮▮▯▯ (3/5) |
| Lecture Attendance Importance | ▮▮▮▮▯ (4/5) |
| Industry Relevance | ▮▮▮▮▯ (4/5) |
| Exam Difficulty | ▮▮▮▯▯ (3/5) |
| Self-Study Suitability | ▮▮▮▮▯ (4/5) |
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Topics
Topics may differ depending on your professor.
When I took the course back in 2023, the topics included:
- 1. Introduction/Data Representation
- The von Neumann Model
- Decimal to Binary Conversions
- Signed Integer Representation
- Floating-Point Representation
- 2. Data Representation
- Character Codes
- Codes for Data Recording and Transmission
- Error Detection and Correction
- 3. Boolean Algebra and Digital Logic
- Boolean Algebra
- Logic Gates
- Combinational and sequential circuit design
- 4. Introduction to a Simple Computer
- CPU organization
- Bus, clocks, input/output subsystems
- Memory organization and addressing
- Interrupts
- Instruction processing
- Assembly language
- 5. Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)
- Instruction format
- Addressing
- Pipelining
- Real-world example of ISA’s
- 6. Memory
- Memory hierarchy
- Cache memory
- Virtual memory
- Memory management
- 7. Input/Output and Storage Systems
- I/O architecture
- Magnetic disk
- Optical disk
- RAID
- Data compression
- 8. System software
- Operating systems
- Virtual machines
- Assemblers
- Compilers
- Interpreters
- 9. Alternative Architectures
- RISC architecture
- Parallel and multiprocessor architecture
The course followed the textbook "The Essentials of Computer Organization and Architecture, 5th Edition, by: Linda Null and Julia Lobur".
How to study
- This is a class that greatly depends on your professor. Content covered, assignment content and exam testing style can be slightly varied depending on your professor. So first, make sure you are following up with the content your professor is teaching and then, streamline your learning process from there.
- Use AI to learn - in a smart manner. Speak with whichever LLM you prefer, feed it your lecture slides and ask it to explain concepts that are tricky to you. Ask it for examples and knowledge checks. Always double check its output though, LLMs are still prone to hallucinations.
- Read your professors slides (most professors provide hints about exam content based on the length of the content covered).
- Work through tutorial questions and assignment questions.
- In general, if you can solve every assignment and tutorial question in this class, you should very confident going into your final exam.