AN OVERVIEW OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS. Computer System Principles. History of Computer Design. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Tree-Height Reduction. Recurrence Relations. Program Dependence and Transformation. Computer System Capacity. PROCESSORS. Machine Representation of Numbers. Computer Arithmetic Algorithms. Some Practical Design Tradeoffs. Arithmetic and Logic Unit Organization. Faster Processing via Multioperation Processors. CONTROL UNITS. Control Unit Overview. Instruction and Operation Processing. Control Unit Speed-up. Address Processing. Branch and Interrupt Processing. Virtual Machines. MAIN MEMORIES. System Memory Uses. Main Memory Use. Memory System Parameters. Typical Memory Organizations. INTERCONNECTION NETWORKS. I/O Type Interconnection Networks. Real I/O Schemes. Alignment Network Characteristics. Typical Alignment Networks. Computer Networks. MEMORY HIERARCHIES. Monoprogrammed Memory Hierarchy Activities. Secondary Memory Devices. Multiprogramming and I/O Activities. Paging Parameters and Performance Tradeoffs. Conclusion and Extensions. Problems.