Intro to Computer Architecture

Computers. Cellphones. Ever wonder how these devices work? Join us in this hour-long seminar for a brief (but thorough!) introduction to the amazing devices driving the modern world.

We will be touching on the following topics, time permitting:

• Solid state devices like transistors, which are the building blocks of computer processors
• Binary encoding, and how computers use 1s and 0s to represent data
• Computer processors (CPUs) and their layout
• Random access memory (RAM)
• Hard disks and large storage arrays
• Caching and the memory hierarchy
• The general layout of a Turing machine (processor plus memory)
• The historical developments that gave rise to computational technology