What time is it?
Major Concepts: a data structure model: basic representation of data, such as integers, logic values, and characters homogeneous data structures, such as arrays and strings heterogeneous data structures, such as floating point numbers and records accessing data structures, involving pointers and values, field extraction addressing mode support for particular data structures.
Major Concepts: machine model: processor, memory, and I/O processor data paths and register transfers instruction cycle of fetch/execute and interrupts bus interconnections relative speeds and capacities of components performance metrics, such as storage space, memory traffic, execution time.
Major Concepts (cont’d): a programming language translation model: compilation versus interpretation steps: macro processing, compilation, assembly, link, load, execute code generation issues demonstrating the relationship between HLL and machine code.
Major Concepts (cont’d): a system model: run-time environment, including stack frame and heap support procedure call support, including such issues as parameter passing and register conventions I/O support, such as level of intelligence in controllers and synchronization operating system support, including memory protection and interrupts sharing and reentrancy virtual memory support.
Computer Systems Increasingly smaller Higher performance More memory Lower power Embedded Everywhere …but extremely complex