• How Washington Works (GOVT-165)
• Linear Algebra (MATH-310)
• Database Management Systems (CSC-570)
• Design and Organization of Programming Languages (CSC-521)

Its quite an adventure! To get more stuff on Washington, visit my student blog titled (drumroll) “my AU Experience”

a. CPU basics

b. Register set

c. Datapath

d. CPU instruction cycle

e. Control Unit

a. CPU basics: CPU components (register set, ALU, control unit); general-purpose and special-purpose registers; execution cycle; interrupts; micro-orders and microprogramming

b. Register Set: MAR; MDR; instruction fetching registers; condition registers; special-purpose registers (index registers, segment pointers, stack pointers); 8086 registers; MIPS registers

c. Datapath: 1-bus, 2-bus, 3-bus organization; analysis of execution cycle for the different organizations

d. CPU Instruction Cycle: Fetch instruction;

a. Memory Locations

b. Memory operations

c. Instruction classification

d. Addressing modes

e. Instruction types

a. Memory locations: Memory hierarchy (registers, cache, main memory); memory address register (MAR); memory data register (MDR); what is a word?

b. Memory operations: read; write

c. Instruction classification: 3-address; 2-address; 1.5-address; 1-address; zero address

d. Addressing modes: Immediate; direct (absolute); indirect; indexed; indirect; autoincrement; autodecrement

e. Instruction types: Data movement; arithmetic and logical; sequencing; input/output

a. History

b. Architectural developments

c. Technological developments

d. Performance measures

a. History: Development of computers; first program-controlled computers (Z1, Z2, Z3); first electronic computer (ENIAC, IAS, EDVAC, EDSAC); first stored-program “Harvard architecture” computer (MARK I, II, III, IV); first minicomputer (PDP-8); first microprocessor (Intel 4004); first personal computer (Apple Macintosh, VAX-11); first supercomputers (CDC 6600, Cray-I); parallel computing (Intel iPSC, Intel Paragon); trends in development from centralized to distributed; cluster computing, grid computing

b. Architectural developments: Use of Complex Instruction Set Computers – CISC (Apple PowerPC, IBM); complex tasks such as converting BCD to binary; use of Reduced Instruction Set Computers – RISC (MIPS, Sun SPARC); reduction in instruction sets and addressing modes

c. Technological developments: Bipolar, MOS, CMOS; Integration scales – small-scale (SSI), medium-scale (MSI), large-scale (LSI), very large-scale (VLSI), wafer-scale (WSI); Moore’s law

d. Performance measures: Metrices – Cycles Per Instruction (CPI); Millions of Instructions Per Second (MIPS); Millions of Floating Point Instructions Per Second (MFLOPS); arithmetic and geometric mean; Other attributes -  CPU/execution time; cycle count; instruction count; Amdahl’s law; speed-up measure

1. Introduction to Computer Systems

2. Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)

3. Processing Unit Design (topic in progress)

• Computer Organization and Architecture [CSC 232] 
• Data Structures and Algorithms [CSC 202]
• System Programming I [CSC 302]
• Introduction to Operating Systems [CSC 301]
• Design and Analysis of Algorithms [CSC 364]
• Introduction to American Literature [ENG 201]

“The semester, she has ended”!

I just completed my last exam on Physics, and this marks the end of my semester. I hope to be more consistent in blogging my next semester here… Until then…

“Good night out there, whatever you are”

We started section 6 of chapter 14

• Directional derivatives
• Gradients

• Product sets
• Applications of ordered n-tuples
• Partitions

We also were introduced to what will form the core of the “Database Systems” course coming up in later semesters : using sets to represent relational databases.
Then we started on the topic of the day, Relations. Here, we looked at domains and ranges, and some theorems on ranges.