GATE Important Topics for CSE Students-

 

In this article, all the topics of the following subjects which are extremely important from the GATE examination point of view for computer science students have been brought out.

1. C, Data Structure and Algorithms
2. Theory of Automata and Computation
3. Compiler Design
4. Digital Logic
5. Database Management System
6. Computer Organization and Architecture
7. Operating System
8. Computer Networks

 

Based on the analysis of previous years GATE exam papers, important topics from these subjects are-

 

C, Data Structure and Algorithms-

 

• These are the most important subjects from the GATE examination point of view.
• About 25% of the complete paper is from these subjects.
• If you are good in these subjects, it will surely provide a boost to your preparation and will increase your chances of cracking the exam.

 

C Programming-

 

• C programming questions are mostly based on finding the output of programs consisting of some pointers, static variables, arrays, strings, functions etc.
• So, you must practice solving different kinds of questions.
• It is highly recommended to start practicing now if you are not good at programming.

 

Data Structure-

 

Practice problems related to-

• Tree like finding number of leaf nodes, number of non leaf nodes, total number of nodes, height of the tree etc
• Binary trees
• Binary Search trees
• Preorder, Inorder and Postorder Traversal
• Spanning trees and minimum spanning tree
• AVL trees and balancing them after insertion and deletion
• Properties of Heap
• Deletion and Insertion of items in heap
• Different problems on stack, queue and linked list (Understand their concepts very well)

 

Algorithms-

 

Practice problems related to-

• Finding time complexity of given code (Very-very Important)
• Properties of Complexity and relation between them
• Searching and Sorting
• Dynamic Programming Approach
• Divide and Conquer Approach
• Greedy Approach
• Basic problems like knapsack problem, matrix chain multiplication, Longest Common Sub sequence, Job Sequence and Compressing mechanism
• Basic Theory of P-NP problems

 

Theory of Automata and Computation-

 

Practice questions related to-

• Finding minimum number of states in DFA
• NFA to DFA Conversion
• Closure properties of Finite Automata
• Finding regular expressions
• Mealy Moore Machine
• Simplification of Context Free Grammar
• Pushdown Automata
• Closure Properties of Pushdown Automata
• Finding category of any language or grammar
• Concepts related to expressive power of different languages
• Basic Problems related to NP Completeness
• Properties of Recursive and Recursive Enumerable Languages
• Turing Machine making and expressive power of different types of Turing Machine

 

Finite Automata covers approximately 50% questions from Theory of Automata and Computation. So, give it more time than others.

 

Compiler Design-

 

Practice questions related to-

• Parsing and all its techniques (You will always find at least one question from this topic LL(1), LR(1), SLR, LALR, CLR)
•  Finding First and Follow
• Precedence and Associativity of operators
• Finding value from expression tree
• Ambiguous Grammar

 

Digital Logic-

 

Practice questions related to-

• K-Maps (Very high chances of very simple question)
• Multiplexers
• Demultiplexers
• Encoder
• Decoder
• Flip Flops
• Finding modulus of counters
• Floating point representation
• Integer representation
• IEEE Format, Range and Precision

 

Digital logic contains very simple questions. If you practice them, you can solve all the questions very easily. So, don’t lose your marks here.

 

Database Management System (DBMS)-

 

Practice questions related to-

• Normalization (No GATE paper is completed without Normalization)
• Finding normal form (comes 70% times in GATE paper)
• Finding candidate keys
• Decomposition of Relation (Lossless Join and Dependency preservation have more chances to appear)
• SQL Queries (Select clause with properties of having, group by, any, all, exits)
• Relational Algebra
• Joins (High probability of tricky questions from Joins)
• Finding view serializability and conflict serializability
• Finding Recoverable and Cascade Schedule
• Lock based, Two phase, Time Stamp and Graph based protocol with their properties like deadlock freedom and starvation freedom
• Formation and structure of B and B+ Trees
• Primary and Clustering Index
• Number of blocks required in indexing of different type
• Collision Resolution
• Minimum and Maximum number of nodes in B and B+ Trees

 

Computer Organization and Architecture-

 

Practice questions related to-

• Addressing Modes (Theory as well as Numerical Problems)
• Program counter after some instruction
• Number of one address and two address instructions
• Values after shift and rotate instructions
• Horizontal and vertical programming
• Pipelining (Speed up of pipeline, Time taken to complete instruction in pipeline and non-pipeline architectures, Hazards in pipeline, Hazards removal, Branch penalty etc)
• Cache memory organization
• Mapping Techniques
• Multilevel caches
• Write through and write back technique

 

Questions are more tricky in this subject. So, you need to practice more on different types of questions.

 

Operating System-

 

Practice questions related to-

• Finding turn around time and waiting time of different scheduling policies. There are more chances for numerical questions to appear from this topic.
• Banker’s Algorithm to check whether given sequence is safe or not.
• Synchronization (Very high chances for questions from this topic)
• Semaphores and classical problems of synchronization (this will help you to solve other questions)
• Memory Management (page table size, number of pages, logical address, physical address, page size, inverted page table, virtual memory, TLB etc.)

 

Computer Networks-

 

Practice questions related to-

• Addressing (Subnet Address, Supernet Address, Broadcast Address, Range of Network, No. of hosts, Classless Addressing, Non continuous Addresses, Finding first host and last host)
• Flow Control and Error Control Policies (Window Size, Number of Sequence bits, Frame size, Bandwidth, Round trip time, Utilization)
• Properties of Circuit Switching and Packet Switching
• Routing Protocols
• Hamming distance and CRC
• Congestion control policies like slow start, congestion avoidance, congestion detection
• IP Header
• TCP and UDP Header Format
• Theory related to Ethernet and token ring
• Basics of different types of protocols like FTP, HTTP, DHCP, ARP, RARP, SMTP, ICMP, POP
• Basic concepts of cryptography and firewalls

 

Best of luck for your preparation!