COMP 40 Schedule

Wednesday, 9/9

From C++ to C to the machine
Read:

• Hanson: Chapters 1 and 2 (pages 1–31); pages 45–52; pages 33–34; pages 103–107; pages 115–118 (pages 118–125 recommended); pages 137–140; pages 161–164; pages 171–173
• Kernighan and Ritchie: pages 114–115 (argc and argv); page 162 (the cat program); pages 164–165 (fgets); pages 153–155 (printf)
• Williams and Kessler, All I Really Need to Know About Pair Programming I Learned in Kindergarten
• Norman Ramsey, A Short Guide to Working With Unix Libraries

Friday, 9/11

Lab: getting started with C and interfaces

Monday, 9/14

Designing with interfaces and implementations
Design for intro: Introduction: Old wine in new bottles (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Wednesday, 9/16

Analysis of the Table interface, continued
Read: Jim Waldo, On System Design (cultural enrichment)

Thursday, 9/17

Not a class day, but Assignment for intro: Introduction: Old wine in new bottles (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Friday, 9/18

Lab: Points, Lines, and Planes

Monday, 9/21

Entering the world of design

Wednesday, 9/23

Anatomy of an abstraction: Arrays
Read: Dave Parnas and Paul Clements, A Rational Design Process: How and Why to Fake It (cultural enrichment)

Thursday, 9/24

Not a class day, but Design for iii: Interfaces, implementations, and images (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Friday, 9/25

Lab: problem-solving and removing black edges

Monday, 9/28

Contracts, invariants, and implementation: Hanson's Arrays, continued

Wednesday, 9/30

Compilation, address space, memory layout
Assignment for iii: Interfaces, implementations, and images (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.
Read:

• Bryant and O'Hallaron: Chapter 1 (skim)
• Bryant and O'Hallaron, Section 1.7 (read)
• Bryant and O'Hallaron, Sections 6.2 to 6.5

Friday, 10/2

Lab?

Monday, 10/5

Memory is too slow---what to do about it?

Wednesday, 10/7

Analyzing caches: associativity, locality, kinds of cache misses

Thursday, 10/8

Not a class day, but Design for locality: Machine storage and locality (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Friday, 10/9

Lab: Striding through memory

Monday, 10/12

Columbus Day. No class.

Tuesday, 10/13

Compiling review, homework questions, cache review
Assignment for locality: Machine storage and locality (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Wednesday, 10/14

Cache misses, alignment; C types and memory layout

Friday, 10/16

Lab: testing image compression (cancelled, power failure)
Read: Bryant and O'Hallaron, Sections 2.1–2.4

Monday, 10/19

Arithmetic: positional notation, approximating real numbers

Wednesday, 10/21

Binary representation of integers and its arithmetic
Design for arith: Data! Bits, bytes, words, and arithmetic (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Friday, 10/23

Lab: algebraic laws of the Bitpack interface

Sunday, 10/25

Not a class day, but Assignment for arith: Data! Bits, bytes, words, and arithmetic (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Monday, 10/26

Analysis of the III homework; exam review

Wednesday, 10/28

Midterm exam in class: Interfaces and implementations; caches and locality; machine arithmetic.The midterm will focus on material from the first three assignments and on material from in-class exercises. I will also expect you to have some grasp of floating-point arithmetic.You will be expected to read and write C code, although if you can't remember some syntax, you can make it up and explain its meaning.

Friday, 10/30

Lab cancelled. No class.

Monday, 11/2

Data Display Debugger; Introduction to AMD64 assembly: registers, AMD64 parameters and results
Read:

• Bryant and O'Hallaron, new material in Sections 3.1–3.7 (but be aware this material uses the wrong machine for examples)
• Bryant and O'Hallaron AMD64 supplement
• Bryant and O'Hallaron, material for review in Sections 3.8–3.11

Wednesday, 11/4

compare and test instructions; condition codes; translating control flow (if plus boolean short-circuit)

Friday, 11/6

Lab: from C to assembler

Monday, 11/9

translating switch statements; Forrest Baskett's translatino of while loops; AMD64 calling convention; Volatile versus nonvolatile state; genesis of the call stack from procedure-call semantics;

Tuesday, 11/10

Not a class day, but Assignment for code: From C code to machine instructions (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Wednesday, 11/11

Procedure-call wrap-up; Virtual machines

Friday, 11/13

Lab: Unit testing for Universal Machines

Monday, 11/16

Lessons learned from 'arith' homework; design of a Universal Machine

Tuesday, 11/17

Not a class day, but Design for um: Machine code: Virtual Machines (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Wednesday, 11/18

Documentation and Implementation of the Universal Machine

Thursday, 11/19

Not a class day, but Assignment for um: Machine code: Virtual Machines (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Friday, 11/20

Lab: profiling
Read:

• Bryant and O'Hallaron, sections of Chapter 5 (for details, see homework)
• Documentation for valgrind and kcachegrind (for reference)

Monday, 11/23

The 80/20 rule; Seven performance killers; Simple code-improvement tricks

Wednesday, 11/25

Thanksgiving. No class.

Friday, 11/27

Thanksgiving. No class.

Monday, 11/30

More profiles; fast, safe, abstract: pick any two; preserving abstraction with static inline functions; scrutiny of assembly code; putting the burden of safety on the programmer

Wednesday, 12/2

Relocation; load-and-go assembly; a UM macro assembler
Read:

• Bryant and O'Hallaron, Sections 7.1 to 7.9, Section 7.13
• The Universal Machine Macro Assembler (also in PDF)

Thursday, 12/3

Not a class day, but Assignment for profile: Code IV: Profiling and Code Tuning (also in PDF) due at 11:59 PM.

Friday, 12/4

Lab

Monday, 12/7

The UM macro assembler, continued

Wednesday, 12/9

UM assembly-language programs

Thursday, 12/10

Not a class day, but Assignment for asm: From assembly code to machine code due at 11:59 PM.

Friday, 12/11

In lieu of lab: Exam review

Wednesday, 12/16

Final exam: 12:00 PM, Halligan 111A