Faculty Contact Information:
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Consultation:
| The instructor will be available after class on Saturday and Sunday. | |
Required Texts and Readings:
| Englander, I. (2003). Architecture of Computer Hardware & Systems Software, (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. | |
Supplementary Readings:
The standard for papers in the graduate program is the APA style. All participants in this course and all graduate MSIT, INSS, MGMT, PUAD, and ECON courses should have a copy of the style guide:
American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edi.). Washington DC: Author.
All graduate students should be prepared to utilize theUMUC online library. The library contains a large number of full text academic journals that are free of charge and immediately available. The library homepage also contains a number of links related to improving students' research and writing skills. | |
Recommended Journals:
| Publications of the various professional societies (such as ACM -- the Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE Computing Society, and the various management professional societies) are strongly recommended. In addition, there are many trade journals (such as eWEEK) that IT professionals should become familiar with, many of these being published both weekly and on-line. | |
Course Description:
| This course examines the major hardware and system software components and underlying technologies that are the basis of the modern digital computer. Major developments in the evolution of computers are reviewed first; theoretical and engineering topics include Boolean logic, the von Neumann architecture, and semiconductor device technology. The similarities and differences between mainframes, minicomputers, and microprocessors are then investigated. Supercomputer, parallel processor, and distributed system architectures are examined. Various types of storage media and input/output devices are discussed. An overview of system software elements, including operating systems and middleware, is also presented. The course concludes by introducing the student to advanced topics such as optical computers and biomolecular computers. | |
Course Goals:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student should understand and be able to apply knowledge concerning:
- Hardware and systems software components that "realize" modern computers.
- Basic theoretical and engineering concepts on which modern computing is based.
- Impact of design choices on performance.
- Current and emerging issues and trends in the design and production of computers.
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Course Objectives:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student should be able to:
- Describe the concept of the Turing Machine, and its relationship to modern computers.
- Analyze the concept, strengths, and weaknesses of the von Neumann architecture.
- Explain the technologies and economics of semiconductor chip production.
- Define the basic concepts of Boolean algebra and its implementation in hardware logic gates.
- Identify the components of computer hardware architectures, and how they interact.
- Describe the interaction between computer operating systems and the underlying hardware.
- Discuss the possible future of high performance computing, in terms of emerging technologies such as quantum and biomolecular computing.
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Grading Information:
Final grades will be calculated as follows:
Programs 20%
Exam 1 (Sep 9) 25%
Exam 2 (Sep 23) 25%
Exam 3 (Oct 8) 30%
Final grades will be assigned according to the following scale.
A [90, 100]
B [80, 90)
C [70, 80)
F [0, 70) | |
Course Requirements:
Graduate school at the masters level focuses on helping students obtain the education needed for success as professionals in their chosen fields. Thus, UMUC-Europe Graduate Programs and Bowie State University share the common goals of promoting excellence in academic scholarship through thoughtful inquiry and the skillful application of knowledge and theory for the betterment of society.
Students are expected to complete the assigned programming projects. Programs will be assigned during the first, second and third weekend meetings and are due on Saturday morning of the next weekend meeting.
Exams lasting 90 mintes will be given on Saturday morning of the second and third weekend meetings, and a comprehensive final exam lasing 3 hours will be given on Sunday afternoon of the last weekend meeting. The exams will consist primarily of problems similar to those at the end of each chapter in the text. Problems will be assigned as preparation for each exam at the meeting preceeding the exam. Solutions to those problems will also be distributed at that time. | |
Description of Course Requirements:
Successful graduate students in American universities dedicate approximately three hours of preparation/study time for every hour spent in the face-to-face classroom. Thus, the following course requirements were developed on the assumption that students would be prepared to spend approximately 150 hours of their own time working on them. In an 8-week term, that is the equivalent of a half-time job. Most 14-week graduate distance education courses require at least 10 hours per week of dedicated time, plus time spent in the virtual classroom.
STATEMENT ON WRITING REQUIREMENTS:
Effective managers and leaders are also effective communicators. Written communication is an important element of the total communication process. The Graduate School recognizes and expects exemplary writing to be the norm for course work. To this end, all analyses and papers must demonstrate graduate level writing ability and comply with the format requirements of the Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association. All writing assignments will be graded on the basis of content, logic, analysis, mechanics, organization, and research. Careful attention should be given to source citations, proper listing of references, the use of footnotes, and the presentation of tables and graphs. Work submitted online should follow standard procedures for formatting and citation.
POLICY ON ACADEMIC INTEGRITY:
Academic integrity is central to the learning and teaching process. Students are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that will contribute to the maintenance of academic integrity by making all reasonable efforts to prevent the occurrence of academic dishonesty. Academic dishonesty includes (but is not limited to) obtaining or giving aid on an examination, having unauthorized prior knowledge of an examination, doing work for another student, and plagiarism of all types.
PLAGIARISM:
Plagiarism is the intentional or unintentional presentation of another person's idea or product as one's own. Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to the following: copying verbatim all or part of another's written work; using phrases, charts, figures, illustrations, or mathematical or scientific solutions without citing the source; paraphrasing ideas, conclusions, or research without citing the source; and using all or part of a literary plot, poem, film, musical score, or other artistic product without attributing the work to its creator. Students can avoid unintentional plagiarism by following carefully accepted scholarly practices. Notes taken for papers and research projects should accurately record sources of material to be cited, quoted, paraphrased, or summarized, and papers should acknowledge these sources in footnotes. The penalties for plagiarism include a zero or a grade of F on the work in question, a grade of F in the course, suspension with a file letter, suspension with a transcript notation, or expulsion. Resubmission of course work from previous classes (whether or not taken at UMUC, UMUC-Europe or BSU), partially or in its entirety, is not acceptable in this course and will result in an automatic failure on the assignment.
DISABLED STUDENTS:
Students with disabilities who need to register or request services should contact the Staff Support Team four to six weeks in advance of registration to request and register for services.
COURSE EVALUATIONS:
Feedback on each graduate course and instructor is important to the university, your professor, and to all UMUC students. UMUC has the responsibility to assess the effectiveness of classroom instruction, and each student has the responsibility to provide accurate and timely feedback through completion of the course evaluation form. This is a shared obligation for us all. It is therefore important that you complete the evaluation form for each course you attend. This should be viewed as an additional course and program requirement. | |
Course Schedule:
All chapter references are to the course text, Englander.
Weekend 1 (Aug 26/27)
Saturday AM 9-12
- Introductions
- Review of Syllabus
- Clarification of goals, objectives and requirements
- Orientation to the subject
- Overview of Computer Systems
Reading: Chapter 1
Saturday PM (1-4)
- Number Systems
- The related number systems bases 2, 8 and 16
- Numeric conversions between number bases
Reading: Chapter 2
Sunday AM (9-12)
- Data Formats
- Alphanumeric Character Data
- Image Data
- Other types of data
Reading: Chapter 3
Sunday PM (1-4)
- Representing Integer Data
- One's Complement and Two's Complement representations
- Arithmetic using Two's complement representations
Readings: Chapter 4
Weekend 2 (Sep 16/17)
Saturday AM (9-12)
- Exam 1
- Floating Point Numbers
- Normalization and Formatting of Floating Point Numbers
- The IEEE 754 Standard
- Arithmetic using floating point representation
Reading: Chapter 5
Saturday PM (1-4)
- The Little Man Computer
- Operation of the Little Man Computer
- Sample Programs using the Little Man Computer
Readings: Englander Chapter 6
The Little Man Computer can be downloaded from
http://www.cba.uri.edu/faculty/vvm/
(The instructor will distribute a "key" to make the program really operable.)
This site also has a lot of information about the program.
Another site with information:
http://www.atkinson.yorku.ca/~sychen/research/LMC/LMCHome.html
Sunday AM (9-12)
- The CPU and Memory
- Components of the CPU
- The Memory Unit
- The Fetch-Execute Instruction Cycle
- Instruction word formats
Readings: Chapter 7
Sunday PM (1-4)
- CPU Architecture, CISC and RISC
- Paging
- Memory Enhancements
- Modern CPU Prcessing methods
Reading: Chapter 9 and Section 15.6
Weekend 3 (Sep 30/Oct 1)
Saturday AM (9-12)
- Exam 2
- Input/Output Devices
- Interrupts
- Bus Architecture
- Peripherals
Readings: Chapter 9
Saturday PM (1-4)
- The Hierarchy of Storage
- Displays and Printers
Readings: Chapter 10
Sunday AM (9-12)
- An overview of Operating Systems
- What the operating system does
- The Bootstrap
- Some history of operating systems
Reading: Chapter 13
Sunday PM (1-4)
- The User View of the Operating System
- Purpose of the User interface
- User functions
- Types of User interfaces
- Command and scripting languages
Reading: Chapter 14
Weekend 4 (Oct 14/15)
Saturday AM (9-12)
- The internal operating system
- Processes and threads
- CPU scheduling
- Memory management
- Virtual storage
Readings: Chapters 15
Saturday PM (1-4)
- File Management
- Logical and physical views of files
- Logical access
- Physical file storage
- The directory structure
Reading: Chapter 16
Sunday AM (9-12)
- Programming Tools
- Program Editors
- Program Translation
- Assemblers
- Metalanguages
- Linking and loading
Reading: Chapter 17
Sunday PM (1-4)
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Academic Policies:
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Faculty Bio:
| John Keohane earned his BA in Mathematics from Bowdoin College and his MS and PhD in Computer Science from SUNY at Stony Brook. He has been teaching at the college/university level for 28 years, more than 11 of which have been with the European Division of UMUC, where he holds the rank of full professor. | |