GATE CS 2021 (Revised) Syllabus

Last Updated : 21 Apr, 2025

IIT Bombay is organizing GATE 2021. In this year, The GATE authority 2021 has made major changes and has also revised the syllabus of various GATE Papers.

For the CSE (Computer Science and Information Technology) paper, GATE authority has revised syllabus, we have compare syllabus of GATE CS 2020 and GATE CS 2021 and found these following changes. Though, they have completely updated Syllabus for General Aptitude (GA) and added two more topics : "Analytical Aptitude", and "Spatial Aptitude". There are following changes for Technical part of CSE :

Syllabus of General Aptitude (GA) have completely updated and divided into four parts :
- Verbal Aptitude
- Quantitative Aptitude
- Analytical Aptitude
- Spatial Aptitude
"Monoids" is added in the Discrete Mathematics, but it was inclusive part of "Groups" in previous syllabus.
"Graph search" updated as "Graph traversals" in the Algorithms.
"pipeline hazards" is added in the Computer Organization and Architecture.
"Local optimisation", "Data flow analyses: constant propagation, liveness analysis, common subexpression elimination." is newly added in the Compiler Design.
"System calls" and "I/O scheduling" are clearly added in the Operating System, but these were inclusive in the previous syllabus.
There are major changes in the syllabus of computer networks.
- "IPv6", "Basics of Wi-Fi", "Network security: authentication, basics of public key and private key cryptography, digital signatures and certificates, firewalls." are removed.
- "CIDR notation, Basics of IP support protocols (ARP, DHCP, ICMP), Network Address Translation (NAT), and Email" are added.

A. Syllabus for General Aptitude (GA)

Verbal Aptitude - Basic English grammar: tenses, articles, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, verb-noun agreement, and other parts of speech Basic vocabulary: words, idioms, and phrases in context Reading and comprehension Narrative sequencing
Quantitative Aptitude - Data interpretation: data graphs (bar graphs, pie charts, and other graphs representing data), 2- and 3-dimensional plots, maps, and tables Numerical computation and estimation: ratios, percentages, powers, exponents and logarithms, permutations and combinations, and series Mensuration and geometry Elementary statistics and probability
Analytical Aptitude - Logic: deduction and induction Analogy Numerical relations and reasoning
Spatial Aptitude - Transformation of shapes: translation, rotation, scaling, mirroring, assembling, and grouping Paper folding, cutting, and patterns in 2 and 3 dimensions

B. Computer Science and Information Technology

Engineering Mathematics

Section-1: Engineering Mathematics - Discrete Mathematics: Propositional and first order logic. Sets, relations, functions, partial orders and lattices. Monoids, Groups. Graphs: connectivity, matching, coloring. Combinatorics: counting, recurrence relations, generating functions. Linear Algebra: Matrices, determinants, system of linear equations, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, LU decomposition. Calculus: Limits, continuity and differentiability. Maxima and minima. Mean value theorem. Integration. Probability and Statistics: Random variables. Uniform, normal, exponential, poisson and binomial distributions. Mean, median, mode and standard deviation. Conditional probability and Bayes theorem.
Section-2: Digital Logic - Boolean algebra. Combinational and sequential circuits. Minimization. Number representations and computer arithmetic (fixed and floating point).
Section-3: Computer Organization and Architecture - Machine instructions and addressing modes. ALU, data-path and control unit. Instruction pipelining, pipeline hazards. Memory hierarchy: cache, main memory and secondary storage; I/O interface (interrupt and DMA mode).
Section-4: Programming and Data Structures - Programming in C. Recursion. Arrays, stacks, queues, linked lists, trees, binary search trees, binary heaps, graphs.
Section-5: Algorithms - Searching, sorting, hashing. Asymptotic worst case time and space complexity. Algorithm design techniques: greedy, dynamic programming and divide-and-conquer. Graph traversals, minimum spanning trees, shortest paths
Section-6: Theory of Computation - Regular expressions and finite automata. Context-free grammars and push-down automata. Regular and context-free languages, pumping lemma. Turing machines and undecidability.
Section-7: Compiler Design - Lexical analysis, parsing, syntax-directed translation. Runtime environments. Intermediate code generation. Local optimisation, Data flow analyses: constant propagation, liveness analysis, common subexpression elimination.
Section 8: Operating System - System calls, processes, threads, inter-process communication, concurrency and synchronization. Deadlock. CPU and I/O scheduling. Memory management and virtual memory. File systems.
Section-9: Databases - ER-model. Relational model: relational algebra, tuple calculus, SQL. Integrity constraints, normal forms. File organization, indexing (e.g., B and B+ trees). Transactions and concurrency control.
Section-10: Computer Networks - Concept of layering: OSI and TCP/IP Protocol Stacks; Basics of packet, circuit and virtual circuit-switching; Data link layer: framing, error detection, Medium Access Control, Ethernet bridging; Routing protocols: shortest path, flooding, distance vector and link state routing; Fragmentation and IP addressing, IPv4, CIDR notation, Basics of IP support protocols (ARP, DHCP, ICMP), Network Address Translation (NAT); Transport layer: flow control and congestion control, UDP, TCP, sockets; Application layer protocols: DNS, SMTP, HTTP, FTP, Email.