CS208 Introduction to Computer Systems
Wednesday, 3 June 2026

+ Questions

+ Stuff you could study

- Data representation
    - floats and doubles
    - arbitrary precision integers and reals
    - compression algorithms and file formats
    - color
    - images (jpg format, png, bmp, gif, tif,...)
        and algorithms (compression, etc.)
    - audio (encodings, file formats, etc.)
    - video (encodings, file formats, etc.)
        (also, think packet loss: can we get usable
            audio/video even if we lose some of the data?)
    - huge datasets like radio telescope readings,
        particle accelerators, etc.

- Operating systems
    - concurrency (what happens when multiple processes have to share resources?)
    - scheduling algorithms (esp. in presence of multiple CPU cores)
    - device drivers
    - memory hierarchies (caches, virtual memory, etc.)
    - interrupts and system calls
    - file systems
    - ...

- Databases
    - algorithms
    - file structures (and conserving memory)
    - name/value dbs
    - ...

- Networking
    - layered protocol stacks and packet structure
    - routing
    - network architecture
    - ...

- Security
    - red teaming: techniques of attack
    - blue teaming: techniques of defense
    - cryptography & public-key infrastructure
    - network protocols--vulnerabilities, design principles, etc.
    - ...
    
- Architecture
    - how do you turn a pile of transistors into a
        device that does computation?
    - how do you make it fast?
    - what's the difference between a CPU and a GPU?
    - ...

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