A Level Computer System Architecture Syllabus

Objective

Objective of the course is to familiarize students about hardware design including logic design, basic structure and behavior of the various functional modules of the computer and how they interact to provide the processing needs of the user. This subject mainly focuses on the computer hardware and system software. It aims to describe the following aspects—

• Building blocks of the computer
• Computer Design
• Assembly Language Programming   

Outline of Course 

                      Topic                                                 Minimum number of hours 

1. Digital Components                                                          10

2. Data Representation                                                          04 

3. Register Transfer & Micro Operations                             04 

4. Basic Computer Organization                                           04 

5. Central Processing Unit                                                    08 

6. Computer Arithmetic                                                        06

7. Input-Output Organization                                                08

8. Memory Organization                                                       08

 9. Assembly Language Programming                                  08

                     

                                                                            Lectures = 60

                                                              Practical/tutorials = 60 
                                                                                  Total = 120 

Detailed Syllabus  

1. Digital Components                                                                                             10 Hrs.

 Overview of computer organization: Logic gates, Adders, Flip-flops (as 1 bit memory device), Encoders, Decoders, Multiplexers, Registers, Shift Registers, Counters, RAM, ROM 

2. Data Representation                                                                                           04 Hrs. 

Number system, Hexadecimal numbers, ASCII code, Two’s complement, addition, subtraction, overflow, Floating point representation 

3. Register Transfer & Micro Operations                                                    04 Hrs. 

Bus and memory transfers, Three state Bus Buffers, Binary ADDER, Binary Incrementer, Arithmetic circuit, Logic and Shift Micro-operations, ALU

 

4. Basic Computer Organization                                                                  04 Hrs. 

Instruction codes, Direct and indirect address, Timing and Control Signal generation, Instruction Cycle, Memory Reference Instructions, Input Output instructions.

5. Central Processing Unit                                                                              08 Hrs. 

General Register Organization, Memory Stack, One address and two address Instructions, Data transfer, arithmetic, logical and shift instructions, Software and hardware interrupts (only brief introduction), Arithmetic and Instruction Pipelines. 

6. Computer Arithmetic                                                                                 06 Hrs. 

Addition and Subtraction with signed magnitude data, Multiplication Algorithms Hardware Algorithm and Booth Algorithm, Division Algorithm

 

7. Input-Output Organization                                                                         08 Hrs.

 Asynchronous Data transfer - Handshaking, Asynchronous Serial Transfer, Interrupt Initiated I/O, DMA transfer, Interfacing Peripherals with CPU (Introduction), Keyboard, Mouse, Printer, Scanner, Network card, Introduction to Pipelining and Linear Pipeline processor

 8. Memory Organization                                                                                 08 Hrs.

 ROM, RAM, Hard Disk, CD-ROM, Cache Memory - Direct mapping scheme, Virtual Memory concept, Cache memory working principles 

9. Assembly Language Programming                                                                 08 hrs. 

Assembly Language of Intel 8086, Simple examples based on arithmetic and character operations. 

Note: For assembly language programming Turbo Assembler may be used.

RECOMMENDED BOOKS MAIN READING

 1. Carter Nicholas, “Computer Architecture”, Schaun outline Sevies , Tata McGraw-Hill, 2008.

 2. M. Morris Mano, “Computer System Architecture”, Pearson Education, 2008.

 3. Peter Abel and N. Nizamuddin, “IBM PC Assembly Language and Programming”, Pearson Education, 2009.

 

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

 1. J.P. Hayes, “Computer Architecture & Organization”, Tata McGraw Hill

 2. Michael J. Flynn, “Computer Architecture: Pipelined and Parallel Processor Design”, Narosa Publishing House, 2002.

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