FIT2134 · Computing systems 2: Architecture and operating systems

Overview

This unit provides a thorough integrated study of how programs are executed and controlled on real computing systems linking machine organisation, memory hierarchy, and operating-system mechanisms into one coherent view. It covers data representation, processor organisation, assembly-level ideas, caching and virtual memory, processes and threads, scheduling, synchronisation, file systems, and resource management, with attention to performance, correctness, and system-level trade-offs. You will learn how software interacts with hardware and operating-system services, how system design affects efficiency and reliability, and how to reason about behaviour beyond the source-code level. Through practical analysis and low-level programming activity, the unit grounds theoretical understanding in system reality.

Offerings

The Handbook publishes no offerings for this unit.

Assessment

The Handbook publishes no assessment items for this unit yet.

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

Learning outcomes

1. Apply professional and security-aware working practices when investigating systems behaviour, recognising how system-level decisions create or close off classes of vulnerability;
2. Select and apply appropriate digital methods, applications and AI-enabled tools to examine, configure and reason about computer systems, attributing AI contributions transparently in your work;
3. Design, code, test and document low-level programs that exercise architectural and operating-system concepts, applying agreed coding standards and secure programming practices;
4. Contribute to the documentation of system-level design choices and trade-offs, producing artefacts that explain how a design balances performance, correctness and reliability.

Workload

No workload detail published.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.