Introduction to Systems Software

3 units

This course is an introduction to the hardware and software foundations of computer processing systems. The course provides a programmer's perspective of how computer systems execute programs and store information. The course material aims to enable students to become more effective programmers, especially when dealing with issues of performance, portability and robustness. It also serves as a foundation for other system courses (e.g., those involving compilers, networks, and operating systems), where a deeper understanding of systems-level issues is required. Topics covered include machine-level code and its generation by optimizing compilers, performance evaluation and optimization, computer arithmetic, memory organization and management, and supporting concurrent computation.