Computer Hardware (Taster Course)

Data encoding and number bases

• Explain how computer hardware encodes data.
• Explain the significance of the number bases used in computing.
• Demonstrate the ability to convert numerical data from one base to another

• Create logic circuits and derive their truth tables and equations.
• Design and simplify logic circuits using Boolean algebra and Karnaugh maps
• Explain the relevance and functioning of sequential logic circuits such as flip-flops.
• Explain the reference and functioning of shift registers and counters.
• Explain the role of a clock in relation to logic operations.
• Explain how an arithmetic logic unit operates.
• Explain how special purpose logic components such as the half-adder, adder, comparator and decoder function.

• Von Neumann and Harvard architectures. Processor design approaches
• Techniques for performance enhancement such as caching and parallelism.
• Computer mainboard components such as the processor, buses and bus bridging chips, ports, network and graphics chips.

• Explain the need for different types of storage.
• Describe computer storage with the help of hierarchical models such as the storage pyramid.
• Distinguish between primary and secondary storage.
• Explain how bit cells can be constructed, written to and accessed.
• Explain how primary storage impacts processing performance.
• Demonstrate the ability to calculate storage effective access time (EAT).
• Explain how secondary storage is implemented and model the construction of typical, commonly available secondary storage devices.
• Demonstrate the ability to calculate capacity, access times and transfer rates for secondary storage devices.
• Explain how redundancy based systems such as RAID operate.

• Explain how integers are represented and stored.
• Distinguish between sign and magnitude representation and two's complement representation.
• Explain how floating point numbers are represented.
• Compare fixed point and floating point number representation approaches.
• Critically analyse a given approach to floating point number representation in relation to parameters such as design approach, range and precision.

• Input and output devices.
• Serial and parallel movement of data.
• Movement of data to and from devices.
• Typical interface types such as serial, parallel, USB, infrared and Bluetooth.
• Interrupts and polling.
• Programmed I/O, I/O instructions, memory-mapped I/O. Direct Memory Access (DMA).

• Typical embedded system architectures and applications.
• The place of embedded systems in Computer Science.
• Typical hardware and software.
• Tools.
• Programming and deployment.
• Debugging an embedded system consisting of hardware and software.

• Creation and configuration of a Local Area Network (LAN) consisting of interfaces, cables and switches.
• Test and diagnosis of network problems using hardware such as cable testers and software tools such as ping, netstat and tracert.