GATE CSE Syllabus 2027 (Official, Topic-wise): Full Breakdown

The GATE 2027 Computer Science & Information Technology (paper code CS) syllabus is set by IIT Madras, the organising institute for GATE 2027. It is organised into ten subject sections — Engineering Mathematics plus nine core computer-science subjects — alongside General Aptitude, which is common to every GATE paper. The paper is worth 100 marks (General Aptitude 15 + CS subject 85). Below is the full syllabus, section by section, with each section listing its official topics.

Exam structure at a glance

For how these marks are split across 1-mark/2-mark and MCQ/MSQ/NAT questions, see our guide to the GATE exam pattern and marking scheme.

General Aptitude (15 marks)

General Aptitude is common across all GATE papers and covers verbal aptitude, quantitative aptitude, analytical and spatial reasoning. At 15 marks it is high-value and comparatively scoring — do not neglect it.

Section 1: Engineering Mathematics

• Discrete Mathematics: Propositional and first order logic. Sets, relations, functions, partial orders and lattices. Monoids, Groups. Graphs: connectivity, matching, colouring. 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 and minimization — algebraic technique, Karnaugh map, tabular method.
• Design of combinational and sequential circuits.
• Number representation and arithmetic (fixed and floating point).

Section 3: Computer Organization and Architecture

• Instruction set and addressing modes.
• Design of arithmetic and logic unit (ALU).
• Design of control unit — hardwired and microprogrammed.
• Memory interfacing and hierarchy: performance, cache memory mapping.
• I/O interface (interrupt and DMA).
• Instruction pipelining, pipeline hazards.

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 sub-expression 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

• Principles of layering.
• Basics of switching (circuit, packet and virtual circuit) and performance metrics.
• Data link layer: error detection, Medium Access Control, Ethernet.
• Distance vector and link state routing.
• IPv4 — fragmentation, CIDR notation, Network Address Translation.
• TCP — flow control and congestion control, socket API.
• DNS and HTTP.

How to use this syllabus

1. Map your study plan directly to these ten sections — finish one section’s theory, then solve its previous-year questions before moving on.
2. Decide depth and order using our GATE CSE subject-wise weightage guide.
3. Validate your understanding on real papers — every question on our free GATE PYQ pages is tagged by subject so you can practise section by section.
4. Follow a schedule with our 1-year month-by-month GATE plan.