Purpose Our goal in this course is to introduce the students the world of computing. The first objective is to show the students that there is no magic to computing. The computer is a deterministic system and is not an electronic genius. It is systematically interconnected collection of very simple parts. We first give those simple parts and, step-by-step, build the interconnected structure that construct the computer. We start at the bottom, construct the foundation first, and then go on to add layers and layers, to what most people know as a full-blown computer. At each layer, we explain the underlying fabric. The second objective is to write programs in a computer language such as C, using the sophisticated features of that language, and understand what is going on underneath, inside the computer.

Course Content (Short Description) The course content is composed of the basics of computer systems, bits, data types and operations, digital logic structures (logic gates, combinational logic circuits, concept of memory, sequential logic circuits), the von Neumann model, memory organization and registers, instruction sets, addressing models, Assembly language, Programming in C.

Face-to-face lecture and lab sessions, online course materials, visual presentations, discussions, lab works.

Patt & Patel, Introduction to Computing Systems (2nd edition), MGraw Hill, 2004. ISBN 0-07-121503-4.