This lecture covers four major topics: The Big Picture (how this course fits in CS), the Launch-to-Execution Journey (the Software-Hardware Interface), Performance (barriers and innovations), and the CPU (a day in the life of).

• The Big-Picture view from 40,00 feet
• A Journey through Abstractions

• The software part and the O/S
• The hardware part and the architecture

• Performance Terms
• Performance drivers

• The Fetch-Execute Cycle
• LMC

• Building Blocks
• The ISA

• The role of system software (compiler and O/S)
• The von Neumann Architecture

• Latency versus Throughput and Speedup
• Moore's Law
• Size, Heat, and Speed
• Buffering and Caching

• The Fetch-Execute Cycle
• Machine Language and Opcodes

• Chapter 1 of our textbook
• The von Neumann Architecture
• Ubiquitous Computing
• LMC: Familiarize yourself with its instructions and programming. Here is a demo from the University of Herfordshire, UK; an applet that simulates the LMC from Illinois State University, USA; and two articles that describe it from Wikipedia and ISECON.