Level 6 Graduate Diploma in Engineering (9210-01) - City & Guilds

Unit 123 Computer architecture and operating systems
Assessment Criteria
Outcome 1 Read and understand C language and construct intermediate
level C programs
The learner can:
1. Describe operators and expressions in C language
2. Describe Input and Output Functions: Simple computational problems and decision making
3. Use control statements; branching, looping, nested control structures, switch, break, continue,
‘go to’ statements
4. Write programs in C, using an environment such as Visual Studio, Code: Blocks/GCC
Outcome 2 Describe the basic principles behind the design of modern
computer systems
The learner can:
1. Describe the Computer structure: processor, memory, I/O, secondary storage, buses, clocks,
sequential operation, Fetch-Execute cycle.
2. Describe Data representation: Binary and hex integer representations and conversions, Fixedlength
arithmetic, 2's complement representation, IEEE FP representation, analogue versus
digital.
3. Illustrate Memory organisation: Addresses, Memory organisation into bytes, words, longs,
memory-mapped I/O.
4. Describe the processor or CPU: Simple internal structure, registers, program counter etc., The
execution cycle.
5. Describe Instructions: The CPU instruction set syntax and semantics, Addressing modes,
Encoding and decoding.
6. Explain Data Structures: Stacks, queues and linked links, The stack and stack frame for
supporting parameters, local variables, and recursion.
7. Describe Simple I/O: Handling simple devices: the interface and the peripheral, Device registers
and polling, Interrupts and interrupt hardware, interrupt vectors.
8. Describe More complex devices: Programmable devices, Block-mode devices, DMA: system
structure and operation.
9. Describe Magnetic and Optical Storage: Basic bit storage, Tapes and disks: structure and
operation of discs, Organisation of disc blocks into files.
10. Describe Performance enhancements: Pipelining, caches memory, RISC vs CISC architectures,
superscalar architectures, VLIW, multi-threaded and trace-based architectures.
11. Describe Micro-controllers: Role: low cost, low power, small size computer systems, I/O
systems.
Outcome 3 Describe the functions of the major components of an
operating system
The learner can:
1. Comprehend the basic concepts on which the stored-program computer is built.
2. Comprehend computer hardware management & Abstraction.
3. Describe process management.
4. Describe Memory management: Paging, page tables, MMUs, Page faults, associative page table
caches, multi-threading.
5. Describe multi-tasking (Pre-emptive and Co-operative).
Level 6 Graduate Diploma in Engineering (9210-01) 115