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Course Beginner

How Computers Work

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01

Number Systems and Data Representation

The topic that establishes the representation rules by which bits become numbers, text, and real values.

  1. 01 Binary Number System Positional number systems, binary representation, and conversion between bases.
  2. 02 Hexadecimal and Octal Bases Hexadecimal and octal representations, which give compact notation without breaking bit boundaries, and how to convert between them.
  3. 03 Signed Integers and Two's Complement How negative numbers are encoded within a bit pattern, two's complement representation, and overflow behavior.
  4. 04 Floating-Point Numbers Representing real values in finite bits, the IEEE 754 field layout, and the source of precision loss.
  5. 05 Bit-Level Operations The AND, OR, XOR, and NOT operators, shifts, and field extraction with masks.
  6. 06 Character Encodings Character sets from ASCII to Unicode, the distinction between code points and byte sequences, and UTF-8 encoding.
  7. 07 Byte Order The order in which multi-byte values are laid out in memory, little- and big-endian representation, and the problems this creates when exchanging data.

02

Processor and Memory

Instruction execution, the transfer of data to the processor, and the memory hierarchy's effect on performance.

  1. 01 Registers and Main Memory The model of memory as an addressed array, the role of registers, and the access-cost gap between them.
  2. 02 Instructions and the Program Counter The encoding of instructions as bit patterns, the fetch-decode-execute cycle, and how program flow arises.
  3. 03 The Processor Cache Cache layers, the locality principle, the cache line, and the effect of access pattern on performance.
  4. 04 Interrupts Notifying the processor of external events, saving context, interrupt types, and the foundation of preemptive multitasking.
  5. 05 The Hardware Implementation of Arithmetic From logic gates to adder circuits, how subtraction reuses the same circuit, and how status flags are produced.

03

From Source to Executable

How source text is compiled, linked, and loaded into memory to become a running process.

  1. 01 Compiler, Interpreter, and Virtual Machine Three models for executing source code, the trade-offs between them, and the distinction between a language and its implementation.
  2. 02 Compilation Stages The stages of lexical analysis, parsing, semantic checking, intermediate representation, and code generation.
  3. 03 Linking and Loading Object files, symbol resolution, static and dynamic linking, and loading a program into memory.
  4. 04 Memory Layout — Stack and Heap A process's address space regions, how the call stack operates, allocation on the heap, and lifetime rules.

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