Computer Systems

Description

This is an introductory course to computer systems and is a mixture of computer programming in
C, computer architecture, and embedded systems. This material will be delivered in 3 equal
parts and comprises:
1. An introduction to C programming, by Richard Lobb. Note that Lab and assignment work
for this section will be on the COSC quiz server.
2. An introduction to computer architecture, by Phil Bones.
3. An introduction to embedded systems, by Steve Weddell.

The computer architecture module is delivered as a single lecture per week and over the
duration of the course. This module describes computer hardware through the introduction of
digital logic and provides a link as to why "C" computer programs are written in the way they
are.

In the introduction to C programming during Term 3, you'll learn to write C programs on desktop
machines. C was developed as an alternative to assembly language for low-level programming
tasks like operating systems and embedded computing. It remains the most widely-used
language in the embedded systems community and is also of importance to computer scientists
as the language used for implementing many high-performance libraries and high-level language
interpreters and compilers. For example, the standard Python interpreter and the Linux
operating system are both written in C.
The introduction to embedded systems module in Term-4 extends your C programming skills with
application to a small, dedicated computer board, the UCFK. This embedded system uses an AVR
microcontroller by Atmel and has just a few buttons and LEDs for input and output. Groups of
two students will complete a small, embedded system project on the UCFK board during Term-4.