COMP 40 Syllabus

Note: This syllabus is subject to change without notice at any time. Expect it to change approximately weekly throughout the semester. Scheduling is by ``units,'' not weeks. Units and weeks may not correspond exactly. Check the dates carefully. If you want to see something organized more by date, look at the schedule.

intro (9/9-9/11)

Introduction: Old wine in new bottles
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

Design (also in PDF) due on 9/14.
Homework (also in PDF) due on 9/17.

iii (9/14-9/28)

Interfaces, implementations, and images
Read:

Jim Waldo, On System Design (cultural enrichment)
Dave Parnas and Paul Clements, A Rational Design Process: How and Why to Fake It (cultural enrichment)

Design (also in PDF) due on 9/24.
Homework (also in PDF) due on 9/30.

locality (9/30-10/14)

Machine storage and locality
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

Design (also in PDF) due on 10/8.
Homework (also in PDF) due on 10/13.

arith (10/16-10/26)

Data! Bits, bytes, words, and arithmetic
Read: Bryant and O'Hallaron, Sections 2.1–2.4
Lecture notes are not yet available.
Design (also in PDF) due on 10/21.
Homework (also in PDF) due on 10/25.

Midterm exam in class (10/28)

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.

code (11/2-11/9)

From C code to machine instructions
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

Homework (also in PDF) due on 11/10.

um (11/11-11/18)

Machine code: Virtual Machines
Design (also in PDF) due on 11/17.
Homework (also in PDF) due on 11/19.

profile (11/20-11/30)

Code IV: Profiling and Code Tuning
Read:

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

Lecture notes are not yet available.
Homework (also in PDF) due on 12/3.

asm (12/2-12/11)

From assembly code to machine code
Read:

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

Homework planned to be due on 12/10.

Final exam (12/16)

12:00 PM, Halligan 111A