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Introducing computer systems from a programmer's perspective

Published: 01 February 2001 Publication History

Abstract

The course "Introduction to Computer Systems" at Carnegie Mellon University presents the underlying principles by which programs are executed on a computer. It provides broad coverage of processor operation, compilers, operating systems, and networking. Whereas most systems courses present material from the perspective of one who designs or implements part of the system, our course presents the view visible to application programmers. Students learn that, by understanding aspects of the underlying system, they can make their programs faster and more reliable. This approach provides immediate benefits for all computer science and engineering students and also prepares them for more advanced systems courses. We have taught our course for five semesters with enthusiastic responses by the students, the instructors, and the instructors of subsequent systems courses.

References

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Hennessy, J. L., and Patterson, D. A. Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, second ed. Morgan- Kaufmann, San Francisco, 1996.
[2]
IEEE Computer Society, and ACM. Computing curricula 2001. Draft, Mar. 2000.
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Lebeck, A. R. Cache conscious programming in undergraduate computer science. In SIGCSE (Mar. 1999), ACM, pp. 247-251.
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Patt, Y. N., and Patel, S. J. Introduction to Computing Systems: From Bits and Gates to C and Beyond. McGraw-Hill, 2000.
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Patterson, D. A., and Hennessy, J. L. Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface. Morgan-Kaufmann, San Francisco, 1997.
[6]
Roberts, E., LeBlanc, R., Shackelford, R., and Denning, P. J. Curriculum 2001: Interim report from the ACM/IEEE-CS task force. In SIGCSE (Mar. 1999), ACM, pp. 343-344.

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 33, Issue 1
March 2001
432 pages
ISSN:0097-8418
DOI:10.1145/366413
Issue’s Table of Contents
  • cover image ACM Conferences
    SIGCSE '01: Proceedings of the thirty-second SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer Science Education
    February 2001
    456 pages
    ISBN:1581133294
    DOI:10.1145/364447
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 February 2001
Published in SIGCSE Volume 33, Issue 1

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