Basic Computer System Architecture and Essential Operating System Concepts

Learning about computer system architecture is essential for software developers to implement performance meeting optimized code for system software or applications. Mainly, insights into the underlying system architecture, its components (CPU, memory, cache, registers, I/O devices, system buses), and their interconnections are helpful to tune the application performance metrics such as throughput, latency, reliability, scalability, and security. For instance, knowing details of computer memory hierarchy and organization helps developers to implement suitable codes for minimizing memory access latencies and utilizing the memory optimally. Similarly, learning about the processor architecture in terms of the number of cores and their interconnection helps in writing suitable computational load distribution codes for maximizing CPU core utilization and minimizing communication latencies.