COMP502

Foundation of IT Infrastructure
Week 01 – Introduction to Foundation of IT Infrastructure
What to learn from this course?

• Provides an introduction to IT infrastructure concepts in

order to enable students to understand computer systems
architecture.
• Concepts of single user, multi-user, centralised, and
operating systems are covered.
Teaching team

• Paper Leader & City Lecturer: 

• Dr Minh Nguyen 
• minh.nguyen@aut.ac.nz
• South (Manukau) Lecturer: 
• Ms. Julia Ma <jing.ma@aut.ac.nz>
• Lab supervisors:
• Mr. Robert Le (City campus)
• huy.le@aut.ac.nz
• Mr. Quan Nguyen (City campus)
• quan.nguyen@aut.ac.nz
Assessments

Paper
Assessment

Online
Assignment
Questionnaire

A1 A2 A3 Q1 Q2
(20%) (20%) (20%) 20% 20%
Assessments
• Assessment 1 (coursework, 3 parts: P1, P2, P3)
• 3 Assignments = 60%
• Assessment 2
• 2 Online Questionnaires = 40%
• “Unmarked” Lab exercises (coursework):
• Up to 10 per week
• Used to support your learning and alternative
assessment application (if needed)
Late policy: 5% penalty per calendar day

• To pass: overall > 50%; and Each assessment > 35%

• (Q1 + Q2) > 35% & (A1 + A2 + A3) > 35%
• [Q1 + Q2 + A1 + A2 + A3)] > 50%
The timetable & Learning Mode

• 1 x two hour lecture per week

• 1 x two hour lab per week
• Learn by
• Watching
• Listening
• Thinking
• Discussing
• Reading
• DOING!
• At least 6 hours of work per week outside of classes.
• Self learning is assisted by using AUT resources.
 Assumed Knowledge
• Computer Literacy
• Typing Skills (practise in lab and at
home)
• Use Windows applications
• Numeracy
• Use a calculator for complex
calculations,
and be able to do simple manual + - x /
• Literacy
• Know how to search on GOOGLE
• Be able to read “technical” documents
• Write correct English sentences.
References
• Lecture/Lab Notes:
• Print and take your own notes during the
sessions
• Handed out each week at AUT Online
• Textbook – Englander (1st, ...5th ed)
• “The Architecture of Computer Hardware, Systems Software, and
Networking”
• Resources:
• Your Text book, AUT Online, Google, Tutors, etc.
 What do we learn today?
• Computer: electronic genius?
• NO! Electronic idiot!
• Does exactly what we tell
it to, nothing more.

• An overview of Computer System

• History of Computers
• Modern Computer Architecture
• Components of Computers
• How to build your own Computer
• Secret behind Computer
Alan Turing (1912 – 1954)

• Every computation can be performed by

some Turing machine.
• A machine that can implement all Turing
machines; this is also a Turing machine!
• Universal computer.
A Brief History
Computer generations
• Modern computers can be classified into three
generations.
• First generation: 1937 – 1946; the first general–
purpose digital computer, ENIAC was built, weighed
30 tons, and had 18,000 vacuum tubes which was
used for processing.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc47a1CMEhk
• Second generation: 1947 – 1962 - This generation of
computers used transistors instead of vacuum tubes
which were more reliable.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhNyURBiJcU
• Third generation: 1963 - present - The integrated
circuit.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5paWn7bFg4
• Computer chips transformed room-size vacuum tube
machines into what would be come the micro
Introduction to Computer System

• A complete, working computer has software and hardware

that are necessary to make the computer function.
What Is a Computer?
• An electronic device, operating under the control of
instructions stored in its own memory, that can:
• Accept data (input)
• Process the data according to specified rules (process)
• Produce results (output)
• Store the results (storage) for future use

Von Neumann architecture scheme

Components of The CPU

• CPU stands for CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT.

• it tells all the computers
functions what to do
just like a human brain.
• It has:
• Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)
• Control Unit (CU) CPU
CPU
• Register sets
CU ALU
Registers
Registers
Parts of a Computer System

• The 6 primary components of a computer are:

• input devices
• the processor (control unit and arithmetic/logic unit)
• memory
• output devices
• storage devices
• communications devices
Parts of a Computer System
• The processor, memory, and storage
devices are housed in a box-like case
called the system unit.
• A peripheral is a device that connects to
the system unit and is controlled by the
processor in the computer.

• You will have chance to build one

virtually in the lab.
Input Devices
• An input device is any hardware component that allows
you to enter data and instructions into a computer

• A keyboard
• A stylus
• A mouse
• A microphone
• A camera/web-cam
• A scanner
Output Devices

• Output devices are hardware components that

convey information to one or more people
• A CRT/LCD Monitor
• A printer
• A speaker
• A head phone
• A projector
Are they input or output devices?

• USB stick Inputs

• Digital camera
• Smart phone screen
• CD/DVD-ROM
• Fax machine
• Modem
• WIFI router
• Touch screen
Outputs
Input and output devices

What do these IO devices send to Computer?

 Data Representation => Binary
• Numbers
• Integers: 1, 2, 3, 4, -12, -14, -999
• Floating points: 3.14, -5.65

• Representation of every real-life things in binary

• Text
• Picture
• Movie
• Music
• Money
• We will learn how during the course.
Binary Number System
• Communication between devices/CPUs:
• Binary language: 0100001010100101…
• But why Binary? Why can't computers just
use base 10 instead of converting to and
from binary?
• Computers weren't initially designed to use
binary... rather, binary was determined to
be the best.
• The basic component of a computer system
is a transistor - a two state device which
switches between logical “1” and “0”.
• Then why human use base 10?
How computer does calculation using binary?

https://youtu.be/GcDshWmhF4A
 Inside the Pentium chip

• Statistics (Pentium II):

• 7.5 million transistors
• 233 MHz - 500MHz
• 64 bit data bus
• 32 bit memory addressing
• Dual Floating point 64-bit processors
• 16KB level 1 cache
• FYI:
Pentium 4 processor chip has:
512K level-two cache, and advanced multimedia instructions and
55 million transistors
Athlon64 processor chip has:
1 MB L2 cache, integrated SSE2 and
105.9 million transistors
32-bit and 64-bit Processors
• 32-bit CPUs (max 232 = 4GB of physical memory)
• Pentium 4, AMD's Athlon, etc.
• 64-bit CPUs (max 264 = 16ExaB of physical memory)
• can run longer, more complex instructions, and
• address more memory than a 32-bit one,
• Gives improved performance for data-intensive tasks such as
audio and video encoding, advanced engineering design apps,
and games
• Intel's Itanium and Itanium 2
(x86-based, 32-bit applications in emulation mode)
• AMD64’s AMD Opteron (for servers) and Athlon 64 (for
desktops)

• What would be your CPU choice today?

 Number systems issue

• The largest number that can be

processed in a single clock cycle will be
equivalent to 2 to the power of the bit
rating. Thus, a 32-bit processor can
handle a number up to 2^32 or roughly
4.3 billion.
• Any number greater than this will
require more than one clock cycle to
process.
• A 64-bit processor on the other hand
can handle a number of a 2^64 or
roughly 18.4 quintillion
(18,400,000,000,000,000,000). This
means that a 64-bit processor would be
able to more efficiently handle large
number mathematics
Memory issues

• A 32-bit processor can address up to 232 bytes of

RAM, or 4,294,967,296 bytes.
• That's 4 gigabytes (a gigabyte is 230 bytes).
• Theoretically, 64-bit processors can use 264
bytes of RAM, or
18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes.
• That's 17,179,869,184 gigabytes, or 16,777,216
terabytes (units of 240 bytes).
• Same issue to the IP Address on the Internet.
• They uses 32 bits to identify machine on the
internet, i.e. 123.121.145.100
Multi Core Processors

• Intel Dual and Quad-core processors

• Intel® 45nm high-k metal gate silicon technology
micro-architecture.
• Roughly twice transistor density of Intel® 65nm
technology,
• That's more than 400 million transistors for dual-core
processors and more than 800 million for quad-core.
Storage Devices
• They store binary bits.
• A storage device is the computer hardware that records and/or retrieves
items to and from storage media
• A hard disk is a storage device
that contains circular platters
that use magnetic particles to
store data
• Others:
• USB flash drive

• Memory card
• CD-ROM
• The Cloud
Communications Devices

• A communications device is a hardware component that enables a

computer to send (transmit) and receive data, instructions, and
information to and from one or more computers or mobile devices
Computer Software
• Software, also called a program, consists of a series of related
instructions, organized for a common purpose, that tells the
computer what tasks to perform and how to perform them
• Graphical user interface
• Web application
• Command line language

• System software consists of programs to control the operations of

computer and its devices
• Operating system
• Utility program
Software
• Software
• End User Applications (e.g. MS Word)
• Development Software:
• compilers & Interpreters
• (e.g. C++, Java, Visual Basic)
• Operating System
• (DOS, Novell Netware, Windows, Mac OS, linux)

• Programming languages & machine codes

• Software tell computer what to do
Generations of Programming Languages
• Machine codes (01010010101010101)
• Assembly languages (LDR, ADD, AND, OR)
• Third-generation Languages:
• Pascal/Delphi, C/C++, Java, Cobol, Fortran, Basic, …
• Fourth-generation Languages
• also called program generators
• SQL
Networks and the Internet
• A network is a collection of computers and devices connected
together, often wirelessly, via communications devices and
transmission media
• Local area network
• Wide area network
Client-server architecture
• Client-server architecture (client/server) is a network
architecture in which
• each computer or process on the network is either a client or a
server.
• Servers are powerful computers or processes dedicated to managing
disk drives, printers, or network traffic.
• Clients are PCs or workstations on which users run applications.
Clients rely on servers for resources, such as files and even processing
power.
Peer-to-peer architecture

• Another type of network architecture is known as a peer-to-

peer architecture because each node has equivalent
responsibilities.
• Both client/server and peer-to-peer architectures are widely
used, and each has unique advantages and disadvantages.
• BitTorrent is a protocol for the practice of peer-to-peer file
sharing over the Internet.

VS.
 Networks and the Internet
• The World Wide Web contains billions of documents called
Web pages
• Web page
• Web site
• Web browser
• Web address
• Hypertext transfer protocol
 What is an IP Address?
•  Computer finds each others via IP
addresses.
• An IP address is a unique global
address for a network interface
• IPv6 has a maximum of = (232)4  4
billion x 4 billion x 4 billion x 4 billion
• Addresses
• An IP address (IPv4):
• is a 32 bit long identifier
• encodes a network number
• has a maximum of  4 billion addresses
IP Addresses in data envelop (IP V4)

32 bits
ve rs io n header Type of S e rvic e /TOS Total Le ng th (in byte s )
(4 bits ) length (8 bits ) (16 bits )
flags
Ide ntificatio n (16 bits ) Frag me nt Offs e t (13 bits )
(3 bits )
TTL Time-to-Live Protoc ol
Header Checks um (16 bits )
(8 bits ) (8 bits )

S ource IP addres s (32 bits )

De s tination IP addres s (32 bits )

Ethernet Header IP Header TCP Header Application data Ethernet Trailer

Ethernet frame
Machine Learning & Deep Learning
A machine learning subfield of learning representations of data. Exceptional
effective at learning patterns.
Deep learning algorithms attempt to learn (multiple levels of) representation by
using a hierarchy of multiple layers
If you provide the system tons of information, it begins to understand it and
respond in useful ways.
• Endless Capability:
• Object identification
on photos and videos
• Speech recognition
and synthesis
• Image processing,
style transfer
• Machine translation
• …
YOLO: Real-Time Object Detection

https://pjreddie.com/darknet/yolo/
Concurrency and Multiprocessing
• A supercomputer is a computer
that performs at the highest
operational rate for computers.
• A supercomputer is typically used
for scientific and engineering
applications that must handle
very large databases or do a
great amount of computation.
• As of November 2018, all
supercomputers on TOP500 are 
64-bit, mostly based on x86-64 
CPUs (Intel EMT64 and AMD 
AMD64 
instruction set architecture), with
few exceptions (all based on 
reduced instruction set computin
g
(RISC) architectures).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500
Opening question
• How do modern computers represent positive, negative
numbers internally using just binary bits?
• You will get the answer next week.