The Computing Technology Inside Your Smartphone (edX)

The course starts by moving step by step through the fundamental layers of computing technology, from binary numbers to application software, and then covers advanced performance techniques and the details of actual smartphone processors.

Learn about:

- Digital logic

- Computer organization

- Instruction sets

- Application Software

- Advanced performance techniques

- Actual smartphone processors
What you'll learn:

- Describe how a smartphone processor works

- Explain computer system design from binary information to programming

- Design a small working computer

- Describe common techniques used to make computers fast

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction and Digital Logic

Overview

Inside Smartphone

Big Ideas

Numbers

Week 2: Digital Logic (cont'd)

Operations

Transistors and Gates

Week 3: Digital Logic (cont'd)

Muxes and Decoders

Adders

Week 4: Digital Logic (cont'd)

Storage

Finite State Machines

Week 5: Computer Organization

Stored Program Computer

LC-3 Instructions

LC-3

Week 6: Computer Organization (cont'd)

Instructional Set Architecture

ISA 2

Week 7: Computer Organization (cont'd)

ARM ISA

LC-3 Control

Week 8: Programming

Programming to Solve Problems

Assembly Language

Input/Output (I/O)

C Programming

Week 9: Performance

Pipelining

Hazards

Instruction Level Parallelism

Thread Level Parallelism

Data Level Parallelism

Week 10: Performance (cont'd)

Caches

Multicore

Permanent Storage

Snapdragon

Conclusion