<p>Whats the difference?</p>
<p>ok i got you, im a rising senior doing the same research. From what i have found</p>
<p>computer science is the programming and software side of things and goes pretty deep into it. </p>
<p>Computer engineering is a split between the programming of cs and the hardware of EE. It doesnt go as in depth into either subject.</p>
<p>^ yup</p>
<p>Computer engineering is the study of hardware and software in computers. Anything to do with computers as you can guess.</p>
<p>The other major is electrical engineering. That’s a more general course than computer engineering. EEs can do computers as well as washing machines or traffic lights. Etc…</p>
<p>see all the “similar threads” links at the bottom of this page?</p>
<p>flip through the next 3-5 pages on this forum. you should be able to find a bunch of reference links that I left there…
or you can stick with that astyle said.</p>
<p>If you wished to compare, here</p>
<p>[Office</a> of Undergraduate Affairs::Curriculum Sheets](<a href=“http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/prospective/gsoe/OUA/curriculum.cfm]Office”>http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/prospective/gsoe/OUA/curriculum.cfm)
Click on the curriculum sheet for Computer Science, Electrical engineering, and Computer engineering. Compare them and you should see that CpE take most 1000+ to 3000+ with CS majors and EE majors.
There are courses that CpE do not take, however.</p>
<p>Computer Engineering is about the design and low-level use of computers. It ranges all the way down to low-level chip design (which is shared with EEs) to system software (which is shared with CSs) and has computer architecture and embedded systems pretty much to itself.
“VLSI”, which stands for the less-than-informative “Very Large System Integration” is about the low-level design of a microprocessor (people who do this are generally called “VLSI designers” or just “designers”). Above that in abstraction is computer architecture, which is about the high-level design of a processor. Think about how a car design must be done. Some grioup designs the engine, some other group the breaks, etc. and some group designs the car-as-a-whole. The computer architect is similar to the car designer. </p>
<p>Next is embedded systems design. That’s also a wide area ranging from board design (which has a fair bit of EE stuff going on) to programming (which has a fair bit of CS stuff). But in general the combination of hardware and software design is the realm of the computer engineer. There can be lots of flavors of embedded design and many schools offer classes based on application area. So a digital signal processing lab class (mostly for sound/image/sensor processing in an embedded environment) or an embedded control systems class (controllers for engines, etc.) might be offered. Robotics is also common. This is a huge area and can be taught in lots of ways.</p>
<p>Next is systems software. OS, compilers and the like are the major focus, but things like locks and threading become important for a CE to know. In general <em>someone</em> on an OS team needs to know something about computer architecture and a LOT of people do on a compiler team. Computer vision, networking, and other things may fall into this category…</p>
<p>CS is more about the software. (Can you tell I’m a CE?)</p>