Computer Science  Stages of compilation (lexical analysis, syntax

analysis, code generation and optimisation).

specification points  Linkers and loaders and use of libraries
 Understand the waterfall lifecycle, agile
 The Arithmetic and Logic Unit; ALU, Control Unit and methodologies, extreme programming, the spiral
Registers (Program Counter; PC, Accumulator; ACC, model and rapid application development
Memory Address Register; MAR, Memory Data  The relative merits and drawbacks of different
Register; MDR, Current Instruction Register; CIR). methodologies and when they might be used
Buses: data, address and control: how this relates to  Writing and following algorithms
assembly language programs
 Need for and characteristics of a variety of
 The Fetch-Decode-Execute Cycle; including its programming paradigms
effects on registers
 Procedural languages
 The factors affecting the performance of the CPU:
 Assembly language (including following and writing
clock speed, number of cores, cache.
simple programs with the Little Man Computer
 The use of pipelining in a processor to improve instruction set)
efficiency
 Modes of addressing memory (immediate, direct,
 Von Neumann, Harvard and contemporary processor indirect and indexed)
architecture
 Object-oriented languages with an understanding of
 The differences between and uses of CISC and RISC classes, objects, methods, attributes, inheritance,
processors encapsulation and polymorphism
 GPUs and their uses (including those not related to  Lossy vs Lossless compression
graphics)
 Run length encoding and dictionary coding for
 Multicore and Parallel systems lossless compression
 How different input, output and storage devices can  Symmetric and asymmetric encryption
be applied to the solution of different problems
 Different uses of hashing
 The uses of magnetic, flash and optical storage
 Relational database, flat file, primary key, foreign key,
devices
secondary key, entity relationship modelling,
RAM and ROM
normalisation and indexing
 Virtual storage
 Methods of capturing, selecting, managing and
 The need for, function and purpose of operating exchanging data
systems
 Normalisation to 3NF
 Memory Management (paging, segmentation and
 SQL – Interpret and modify
virtual memory)
 Referential integrity
 Interrupts, the role of interrupts and Interrupt
 Transaction processing, ACID (Atomicity,
 Service Routines (ISR), role within the Fetch-Decode-
 Consistency, Isolation, Durability), record locking and
Execute Cycle
redundancy
 Scheduling: round robin, first come first served, multi-
 Characteristics of networks and the importance of
level feedback queues, shortest job first and shortest
protocols and standards
remaining time
 The internet structure: The TCP/IP Stack, DNS,
 Distributed, embedded, multi-tasking, multi-user and
Protocol layering, LANs and WANs, Packet and circuit
Real Time operating systems
switching
 BIOS
 Network security and threats, use of firewalls, proxies
 Device drivers
and encryption.
 Virtual machines, any instance where software is
 Network hardware.
used to take on the function of a machine, including
 Client-server and peer to peer.
executing intermediate code or running an operating
 HTML, CSS and JavaScript
system within another
 Search engine indexing
 The nature of applications, justifying suitable
applications for a specific purpose  PageRank algorithm
 Utilities  Server and client side processing
 Open source vs closed source  Primitive data types, integer, real/floating point,
character, string and Boolean
 Translators: Interpreters, compilers and assemblers
 Represent positive integers in binary
 Use of sign and magnitude and two’s complement to  Determine the order of the steps needed to solve a
represent negative numbers in binary problem
 Addition and subtraction of binary integers  Identify sub-procedures necessary to solve a problem
 Represent positive integers in hexadecimal  Identify the points in a solution where a decision has
 Convert positive integers between binary hexadecimal to be taken
and denary  Determine the logical conditions that affect the
 Representation and normalisation of floating point outcome of a decision
numbers in binary  Determine how decisions affect flow through a
 Floating point arithmetic, positive and negative program
numbers, addition and subtraction  Determine the parts of a problem that can be tackled
 Bitwise manipulation and masks: shifts, combining at the same time
with AND, OR, and XOR  Outline the benefits and trade offs that might result
 How character sets (ASCII and UNICODE) are used from concurrent processing in a particular situation
to represent text  Programming constructs: sequence, iteration,
 Arrays (of up to 3 dimensions), records, lists, tuples branching
 The following structures to store data: linked-list,  Recursion, how it can be used and compares to an
graph (directed and undirected), stack, queue, tree, iterative approach
binary search tree, hash table  Global and local variables
 How to create, traverse, add data to and remove data  Modularity, functions and procedures, parameter
from the data structures mentioned above passing by value and by reference
 Define problems using Boolean logic  Use of an IDE to develop/debug a program
 Manipulate Boolean expressions, including the use of  Use of object oriented techniques
Karnaugh maps to simplify Boolean expressions  Features that make a problem solvable by
 Use De Morgan’s Laws, distribution, association, computational methods.
commutation, double negation to derive or simplify  Problem recognition.
statements in Boolean algebra  Problem decomposition.
 Using logic gate diagrams and truth tables  Use of divide and conquer.
 The logic associated with D type flip flops, half and full  Use of abstraction.
adders  Learners should apply their knowledge of:
 The Data Protection Act 1998 backtracking, data mining, heuristics, performance
 The Computer Misuse Act 1990 modelling, pipelining, visualisation to solve problems.
 The Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988  Analysis and design of algorithms for a given
 The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 situation.
 The individual moral, social, ethical and cultural  The suitability of different algorithms for a given task
opportunities and risks of digital technology: and data set, in terms of execution time and space
Computers in the workforce, Automated decision  Measures and methods to determine the efficiency of
making, Artificial intelligence, Environmental effects, different algorithms, Big O notation (constant, linear,
Censorship and the Internet, Monitor behaviour, polynomial, exponential and logarithmic complexity)
Analyse personal information, Piracy and offensive  Comparison of the complexity of algorithms
communications, Layout, colour paradigms and  Algorithms for the main data structures, (stacks,
character sets queues, trees, linked lists, depth-first (post-order) and
 The nature of abstraction breadth-first traversal of trees)
 The need for abstraction  Standard algorithms (bubble sort, insertion sort,
 The differences between an abstraction and reality merge sort, quick sort, Dijkstra’s shortest path
 Devise an abstract model for a variety of situations algorithm, A* algorithm, binary search and linear
 Identify the inputs and outputs for a given situation search).
 Determine the preconditions for devising a solution to
a problem
 The nature, benefits and drawbacks of caching
 The need for reusable program components
 Identify the components of a problem.
 Identify the components of a solution to a problem