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See how a processor really works, from logic gates and instructions to pipelines, caches and memory.
Free, no-obligation chat · Affordable plans that fit your budget · Start this week
About this course
Computer architecture connects the programs you write to the hardware that runs them. Students often struggle with binary and floating-point formats, with tracing instructions through a datapath, with hazards in a pipeline and with cache calculations. Many questions are numerical and need careful, step-by-step working.
This course follows the standard university computer organisation and architecture syllabus used with the textbooks by Patterson and Hennessy and by Stallings: digital logic, data representation, instruction set architecture, the processor datapath and control, pipelining, memory hierarchy and caches, and input and output.
It is taught through affordable 1:1 mentoring. Your mentor explains your lectures with simple diagrams, works through datapath and cache examples with you, and helps you practise exam-style numerical questions. Message us on WhatsApp or email, or fill in the short form, for a free, no-obligation chat. We will suggest a plan that fits your budget and flexible timings in your time zone, and you can start this week.
Outcomes
Detailed syllabus
Every module lists its topics and what you will be able to do. Your mentor plans sessions around them and your own goals.
Gates and circuits that everything else is built from.
By the end of this module you can
Covered in 1:1 mentoring sessions
How numbers and text are stored and how the ALU works with them.
By the end of this module you can
Covered in 1:1 mentoring sessions
How to compare machines fairly.
By the end of this module you can
Covered in 1:1 mentoring sessions
The interface between software and hardware.
By the end of this module you can
Covered in 1:1 mentoring sessions
The hardware that executes one instruction at a time.
By the end of this module you can
Covered in 1:1 mentoring sessions
Overlapping instructions to raise throughput.
By the end of this module you can
Covered in 1:1 mentoring sessions
Making memory seem fast and large.
By the end of this module you can
Covered in 1:1 mentoring sessions
Giving each program its own address space.
By the end of this module you can
Covered in 1:1 mentoring sessions
Connecting devices, and using more than one core.
By the end of this module you can
Covered in 1:1 mentoring sessions
Ways to learn
A mentor who knows this course plans sessions around your goal, explains each idea with fresh examples and checks your understanding. Personal attention, flexible timings in your time zone and affordable plans that fit your budget.
Talk to our teamHow it works
Four simple steps to start Computer Architecture with a mentor. A real person replies to you; there is no booking system.
Message us on WhatsApp or email, or fill in the short form. The first chat is free, with no obligation.
We listen to your goal, level and deadlines, then suggest a plan that fits your budget and timings.
Online 1:1 sessions with a mentor who knows your course, explains clearly and checks your understanding.
Keep going between sessions with practice, and watch your confidence grow week by week.
Learn by doing
Write a program that fetches, decodes and executes a small set of instructions on registers and memory, and print each step.
Build a tool for binary, hexadecimal and two's complement conversion, with IEEE 754 breakdown into sign, exponent and fraction.
Simulate a direct-mapped and a set-associative cache on an address trace and report hit rate and average access time.
Create a worked example showing a pipeline diagram with stalls and forwarding for a short instruction sequence.
Your progress
Milestones from the start, middle and end of the syllabus.
Simplify a Boolean function and draw the circuit
Early on
Trace an instruction through the single-cycle datapath
Halfway
Compare programmed I/O, interrupts and DMA
By the end
FAQs
Free, no-obligation chat
Tell us what you need. Our support team replies within one working day, by email or WhatsApp, whichever you prefer, and arranges your mentor.
Prefer to talk first?
Message the support team directly. We usually reply the same day.
Our mentors teach and explain. They never complete graded work, tests or assessments for students.
Keep going
Processes, scheduling, deadlock, memory, storage and file systems.
Logic, proofs, sets, relations, counting, probability, graphs and recurrences.
C from first program to pointers, memory, structs and files.
Lexing, parsing (LL, LR), semantic analysis, intermediate code, optimisation, code generation.
Electronics basics, Arduino C++, sensors, motors and robot projects.
Last reviewed
Message us on WhatsApp or email, or fill in the short form. Our team replies with a plan that fits your goal and budget, and you can start this week.
Talk to us about a mentor