Computer Organization Roadmap

How computer hardware works at the lowest levels - from logic gates to CPUs.

3 stages · 10 topics 0% done
Computer Organization
✓ CPU Architecture
✓ Memory
✓ Foundations
✓ Logic Gates
✓ Instruction Cycle
✓ Core Concepts
✓ Pipelining
✓ Interrupts
✓ Assembly Basics
✓ Intermediate Skills
Text version of this roadmap

1. Foundations

  • CPU Architecture: ALU, control unit, registers, clock, instruction set architecture (ISA), and microarchitecture.
  • Memory: Cache (L1/L2/L3), RAM, ROM, locality of reference, and cache coherence protocols.
  • Logic Gates: AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR, truth tables, combinational circuits, and Boolean algebra.

2. Core Concepts

  • Instruction Cycle: Fetch, decode, execute, memory access, write-back - the five-stage pipeline.
  • Pipelining: Instruction pipelining, hazards (structural, data, control), forwarding, and branch prediction.
  • Interrupts: Hardware vs software interrupts, interrupt handler, vector table, and context saving.

3. Intermediate Skills

  • Assembly Basics: MOV, ADD, JMP, CMP, CALL, RET - the fundamental instruction mnemonics.