Hello Guys!
Sorry for disappearing. I was going through a lot of personal issues.
A lot of people were DM'ing me about individual subject.So i thought to write a little something about each and every subject in the GATE syllabus.
Without further adieu let's jump right in.I would go through the subjects in the order I did during my entire preparation of 11 months.
1. DLD
I would say this is the easiest “technical” subject in the entire GATE syllabus.
There are generally 4 parts of this subject
- Boolean Algebra
- Circuit minimization
- Combinational Circuits
- Sequential Circuit
You might argue that Circuit minimization comes under boolean algebra,but I like to keep it separate for its importance
For Boolean Algebra and Ckt Minimization, You might be very familiar with it.You have been doing it since 11th(even earlier for some of you). Pretty much nothing is new except Prime implicants and stuff
For combinational Circuits, Still I would say it is easy.Only point of contention is that some circuits like adders and subtractors you have to memorize their structure and formulas.
A lot of direct questions come from formulas
Sequential Circuits.
This is the most important part.I have seen wildly different claims about this subunit.
Some people find it very easy,some very hard.Fortunately I was of the former opinion.
I would suggest going through this chapter slowly and hand drawing every circuit with step by step analysis.Try to understand what is going up rather than mugging up like in combinational ckt.
PS: I consider number systems to be part of COA.
2. Computer Organisation And Architecture
My favorite subject!!
I would suggest the very fine lecture by VD Gothi out on youtube.
While not a strict prerequisite, I would suggest completing at least part of DLD first
There are
- Number System
- Instruction Set Architecture
- IO
- Cache
- Pipelining
For number systems, converting from one base to another should not give to much trouble.Those are one of the easier question.
The most important thing to do is IEEE Representation of float.This is a very low effort high marks topic.If you can do any one topics of COA,do this topics.Generally very easy 2 marks question come from here.
Also Booth’s Algorithm.I dont know what to do about this topics.It had been thought by many students have been phased out, but a question came in recent year(24 or 25 don't remember).Do it if you have time.
Instruction set Architecture
For ISA, you should know the different addressing modes by heart and understand them completely. Fortunately I went through a microcontroller class during my btech,which helped in addressing mode and assembly.
CISC vs RISC: keep note of it,some time easy theoretical question come from here
Instruction Execution sequence:Very important to understand and remember. A lot of PYQs are here.
Instruction Format: You have to find how many instructions are possible for a given system.
Conceptually easy,but can be difficult to calculate under pressure.Practise a lot
IO
Interrupts: Be very thorough with them.These are a favorite questions of professor.I would highly suggest reading books for this specific topics
IO Handling incl DMA: Conceptually slightly tricky but very easy calculations. But note that concepts should be very clear to solve the question. Doubts kill in this topics
Cache
The actual meat of COA.I would suggest just going through theory and examples multiple times before practising any questions.
In my opinion, you will find problems from Cache are either very easy, or very hard, nothing in between.A lot of practice is the only way to solve this issue.
Be very very familiar with theory, conceptual gaps can cause calculation mistakes here!
There are around 90 PYQs in this topics.Do them 5-6 times.
Pipelining.
These are the absolute opposite of IO. Conceptually pretty easy but calculation can be very long,especially finding types of dependency and numbers of clock cycles.
Watch out for speedup questions,they seem easy at first glance ,but might catch you pants down.
I would say COA is a hard subject but is a very rewarding one too. IF you have a strong COA,I think you can easily score under 1K rank.
3. Operating System
Again while not a strict prerequisite,I would suggest doing COA before OS.
It has
- Process
- Synchronization
- Deadlock
- Memory Management
- File Systems
Process
Generally four types of question come from here
- Process Scheduling
- Theoretical question about process
- question about forks and other system calls.
- Some times thread too
Generally all are easy one.But be careful about theory.It does not hurt going through Galvin once on this topic.A scoring section, this one.
Synchronization
I am not going to lie,theory here is hard to wrap your head around.But once you get the hang of this topics.Questions are easy to solve
Practice a lot of semaphore questions
And don't forget about classical problems.
Deadlock
Easiest part of OS.Easy theory and just two types of questions.One is banker’s algorithms and the other is “max number of process without deadlock“
Theoretical questions are there but are easy
Remember the conditions of deadlock.Will help a lot in Theoretical MSQs
Memory Management And Virtual Memory
Some of the hardest questions in the entire paper come from here.Spend a lot of time int his subject. It the most popular of all the topics of OS with around 90 PYQ
Page replacements questions are easy,you just need to remember what algorithm does what.
Memory management questions are slightly more trickier
Virtual Memory is hard to understand and hard to solve too.Practice a lot.Read std books(Galvin)
The key and only strategy here is giving this a lot of time.Spend half of the time you gave OS here.
File Systems
The last of Units of OS.When people generally come here,they are tired from Virtual memory and are expecting an easier time.Initially the theory will seem easy to give you a false sense of hope, but questions can be very complex here.
There are generally three types of questions
- Disk Scheduling : Easy as long as you remember the algorithms and dont make silly mistakes
- File system: Hard but need good theory knowledge.Rarer too,Only 10 pyqs
- Disk: Hard Disk calculation questions.Hardest and the most common type of question,but were getting rarer until 2024 where we got 2 questions from this topics. Spend 2 days on hard disk only.
Welp that was long.
If any question,feel free to ask me.