Topography / How Computers Work

18 lessons and 78 connections between them, based on the cross-references in each lesson. Lines show references. For reading order, seethe How Computers Work track page.

• Everything Is a Number (bits & bytes)4 lessons link here
• Numbers for Real (signed ints, overflow, floating point)3 lessons link here
• Logic From Switches (transistors → gates → adder → memory)2 lessons link here
• The CPU (fetch-decode-execute, the ISA, assembly)8 lessons link here
• The Memory Hierarchy (cache, locality, the memory wall)9 lessons link here
• How Code Becomes Execution (compilers, stack & heap)6 lessons link here
• Processes, Threads & the Kernel10 lessons link here
• Concurrency & the Hardware6 lessons link here
• I/O, Interrupts & the Bus7 lessons link here
• Capstone: Keypress → Pixel2 lessons link here
• The drawer that says it saved2 lessons link here
• The address book every process carries5 lessons link here
• Whose turn, and who decides2 lessons link here
• The names a program needs to find1 lesson links here
• Waiting without spinning1 lesson links here
• Build a stack machine4 lessons link here
• The program that starts programs3 lessons link here
• Build malloc, then a garbage collector3 lessons link here