Intro Summary#

Welcome to COMP2300/6300/ENGN2219 Computer Organisation and Program Execution for Semester 1, 2024!

This is the course where you learn how your computer actually works: you’ll learn how a CPU is constructed, how the parts of your computer work together, and how the high-level programming languages that you have learned in other courses can be translated into assembly language and CPU instructions.

The practical course content will be split in two halves. In the first half, you will be using a digital logic simulator called Digital. Digital allows you to build computer hardware without having to think about the practical details of electricity and transistors, and instead just connecting together the fundamental logic units (logic gates) with wires. These labs will give you insight into how a computer understands what to do when given instructions, how it computes outputs and how it can remember things, all with just wires and electricity. In the end, you will build your own CPU and understand exactly how it works!

In the second half, you’ll learn by writing programs for your very own micro:bit, a tiny computer that fits in your pocket. In the labs and assessments you’ll experiment with your micro:bit to learn more about how the CPU in your laptop or desktop computers work, and create expressive programs that interact with the real world through the micro:bit’s sensors and it’s light and sound outputs. This builds on the first half, where you learnt how the hardware aspects work, by showing you the software side and explaining the glue that holds the software and hardware together: the instruction set architecture.

COMP2300/6300/ENGN2219 is a course that challenges your assumptions about how computers work, and what happens in our computer when we run a program, and our focus on expressive and creative assessment tasks could make this an exciting turning point in your academic journey.

Looking forward to seeing you in Semester 1!

Getting started#

If you’ve just enrolled, have a look at the course start checklist.

Remote Students#

Please see this page for more info.

Course Content#

This site contains all the course content:

Enrolling and Permission Codes#

See the FAQ entry

Getting Help#

If you need help with any aspect of COMP2300/6300/ENGN2219 look at the course FAQ and head to our getting help page (link).

If you still need help, get in touch via the forum (if you’re already enrolled in the course) or email (if you’re not yet enrolled).

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