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SKT Subjects · Computer Science

AS & A Level Computer Science

Cambridge International AS/A Level Computer Science (9618), broken into units as they're taught.

Part 1 · Ch1–11 · AS

Theory Fundamentals

  1. Ch1

    Information Representation

    Number bases, prefixes, two’s complement, binary arithmetic and overflow, BCD, ASCII and Unicode, bitmaps and vectors, sound and compression.

  2. Ch2

    Communication and Networking Technologies

    LANs and WANs, client-server and peer-to-peer, topologies, cables and wireless, Ethernet and CSMA/CD, the Internet, cloud, bit streaming, IP addressing and DNS.

  3. Ch3

    Hardware

    Memory hierarchy, RAM vs ROM types, buffers, magnetic/optical/solid-state storage, screens, printers, keyboards, touch screens and sound.

  4. Ch4

    Logic Gates and Logic Circuits

    Propositions, Boolean operators, truth tables and the six gates — converting between statements, expressions, circuits and truth tables.

  5. Ch5

    Processor Fundamentals

    The von Neumann model, CPU registers, buses, performance factors, I/O ports, the fetch–execute cycle, register transfer notation and interrupts.

  6. Ch6

    Assembly Language Programming

    Machine code, the two-pass assembler, addressing modes and the instruction set — with an accumulator-machine simulator and trace tables.

  7. Ch7

    Monitoring and Control Systems

    Sensors, actuators, ADC/DAC, closed-loop feedback control and bit manipulation with AND, OR and XOR masks.

  8. Ch8

    System Software

    Operating system tasks, utility programs, libraries and DLLs, compilers vs interpreters, Java byte code and IDE features.

  9. Ch9

    Security, Privacy and Data Integrity

    Integrity vs privacy vs security, malware and threats, firewalls and authentication, backup and access rights, validation, verification, parity and checksums.

  10. Ch10

    Ethics and Ownership

    Professional codes (BCS, IEEE-CS/ACM), the public good and software disasters, copyright, commercial/shareware/freeware/open-source licences, and AI.

  11. Ch11

    Databases

    File-based limits, relations and keys, E–R diagrams and link entities, normalisation to 3NF, the DBMS and SQL DDL/DML — with a live SQL playground.

Part 2 · Ch12–15 · AS

Fundamental Problem-solving and Programming Skills

  1. Ch12

    Algorithm Design and Problem-solving

    Computational thinking, abstraction and decomposition, structured English, pseudocode and flowcharts, loops, stepwise refinement and modules — with a pseudocode tracer.

  2. Ch13

    Data Types and Structures

    Data types, records, 1D/2D arrays, linear search and bubble sort, text files, and stacks, queues and linked lists built from arrays.

  3. Ch14

    Programming and Data Representation

    Variables, types, selection, loops, string functions, procedures and functions, by-value/by-reference parameters, arrays and text files.

  4. Ch15

    Software Development

    Life-cycle models, structure charts, state-transition diagrams, error types, testing methods, test data and maintenance — with FSM simulators.

Part 3 · Ch16–22 · A Level

Advanced Theory

  1. Ch16

    Data Representation

    User-defined types (enumerated, pointer, record, set, class), serial/sequential/direct files and hashing, and floating-point normalisation and rounding.

  2. Ch17

    Communication and Internet Technologies

    Circuit vs packet switching, protocol stacks, TCP/IP and routers, Ethernet sub-layers and MAC addresses, HTTP, SMTP/POP3/IMAP, FTP and BitTorrent.

  3. Ch18

    Hardware and Virtual Machines

    RISC vs CISC, hard-wired vs microprogrammed control units, pipelining, SISD/SIMD/MISD/MIMD, massively parallel computers and virtual machines.

  4. Ch19

    Logic Circuits and Boolean Algebra

    Half and full adders, SR and JK flip-flops, Boolean algebra laws, sum of products and Karnaugh maps — with live circuit labs and a K-map solver.

  5. Ch20

    System Software (A Level)

    OS structure, I/O, process states and scheduling, paging and virtual memory, compiler stages, BNF and syntax diagrams, and RPN.

  6. Ch21

    Security

    Encryption basics, symmetric/asymmetric keys, digital signatures and certificates, S-DES, AES, RSA, SSL/TLS and quantum key distribution.

  7. Ch22

    Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    Graphs and path-finding (Dijkstra, A* with heuristics), supervised/unsupervised/reinforcement learning, regression, neural networks and back propagation.

Part 4 · Ch23–29 · A Level

Further Problem-solving and Programming Skills

  1. Ch23

    Algorithms

    Linear/binary search, bubble/insertion sort, linked lists, binary trees, stacks, queues, graphs, hash tables, dictionaries and Big O — with a simulator for each.

  2. Ch24

    Recursion

    Base and general cases, tracing recursive calls, the call stack and unwinding, plus benefits vs drawbacks.

  3. Ch25

    Programming Paradigms

    What a programming paradigm is, and the low-level, imperative, object-oriented and declarative styles, with one problem solved four ways.

  4. Ch26

    File Processing and Exception Handling

    Records, serial/sequential/random files, OPENFILE/PUTRECORD/GETRECORD/SEEK/EOF, hashing to file addresses, and TRY/EXCEPT/FINALLY.

  5. Ch27

    Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

    Classes, objects, encapsulation, constructors, getters/setters and properties, inheritance, polymorphism, garbage collection and containment.

  6. Ch28

    Low-level Programming

    Instruction set, symbolic addresses, assembly patterns for assignment, selection, loops and I/O, and relative, indirect and indexed addressing — with a simulator.

  7. Ch29

    Declarative Programming

    Prolog facts, rules and queries, variables and instantiation, backtracking traces, recursive rules and lists — with an in-page Prolog console.

All 29 coursebook chapters logged — AS (Ch1–15) and A Level (Ch16–29).