Teacher

prof. Pier Luca MONTESSORO

Credits

6 CFU

Language

Italian

Objectives

This module gives a detailed description of the fundamental elements of the computer architectures, how they work and how information (even multimedia information) is encoded and processed.

Acquired skills

- Understanding of terms, concepts and problems in computer architectures and information encoding.
- Understanding parameters, performances, size and streaming bit rate of multimedia information.
- Writing simple C programs to handle audio and bitmap files.
- Understanding of computer behaviour at different abstraction levels.
- Understanding low-level programming and writing simple procedures for SimCPU.
- Understanding operating systems fundamentals.

Lectures and exercises (topics and specific content)

Information encoding: texts and numbers; fixed images and movies, sound; error detection and correction; data compression (20 hours).
Computer architecture: the SimCPU didactic model of a RISC architecture; machine language and programming; assembly language and programming; CISC and RISC architectures; cache memory, interrupt and DMA; a brief introduction to parallel processing  (16 hours).
Introduction to operating systems: processes and processors allocation; main memory allocation; mass memory and file system; physical I/O (10 hours).
Spreadsheets: advanced concepts on spreadsheets for technical and scientific applications (4 hours).
Exercises (10 hours).
Labs (10 hours).

References

- D.A. Patterson, J.L.Hennessy, "Struttura e progetto dei calcolatori", Zanichelli 2010
- A. S. Tanenbaum, "I moderni sistemi operativi", Prentice Hall International - Jackson Libri
- G. Bucci, "Architettura e organizzazione dei calcolatori elettronici", McGraw-Hill, 2009
- P. Tosoratti, “Introduzione all’Informatica”, seconda edizione, Casa Editrice Ambrosiana, Milano 1998

Type of exam

Written

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