This course provides a programmer's view on how a computer system executes programs, manipulates data and communicates. It enables students to become effective programmers in dealing with issues of performance, portability, and robustness. It is typically taken in the semester after completing COMP1511, but could be delayed and taken later. It serves as a foundation for later courses on networks, operating systems, computer architecture and compilers, where a deeper understanding of systems-level issues is required.

Topics:
Introduction to the systems-level view of computing, number representation, machine-level programming, representing high-level programs in machine code, memory, input/output, system architectures, operating systems, networks, parallelism/concurrency, communication/synchronisation. Labs and assignment work in C and machine code.