2008 CS 301 - Assembly Language

Announcements

• Final exam and overall course letter grades are posted on NetRun, along with some comments on your final projects. Thanks for all your hard work in this course!
• The final exam is Wednesday at 3:15pm in the usual classroom, Chapman 106. See you there!
• Turn in your project final code here by Wednesday at midnight. I'd like to see well-commented, well-designed, clear and usable code; and a big, clear comment at the top describing what the code does, what works, and how to build and run it. If you think I'll have trouble building your program, include an exe or a screenshot!
  
• Project comments & grades so far are posted on NetRun. Project presentations are in class Monday and Wednesday next week, according to the following schedule:
  

  Monday, December 8: Presenter Topic Jessica L. Gonowon Simple Guessing Game Derick A. Rhodes Tic-Tac-Toe in 32 bits Nicklas P. Bywater Big int multiplication in assembly Matthew V. Chandler Big int in C++  & Assembly Lucas W. Kovtynovich Assembly-style Encryption - short break - Trevor L. Gillespie Bowling scoring in Assembly Michael R. Porreca Multiprecision arithmetic in decimal Nicholas G. Schmidt Assembly emulation library

  Wednesday, December 10: Presenter Topic Andrew Moore     & Derek W. Thomas Evolutionary Assembly Dain M. Harmon     & James P. Walsh 128-bit Emulated CPU Justin Harvey Boot blocks / boot loader - short break - Thomas J. Voight Tiny CPU emulator Brent W. Mello Encryption in assembly Witham Reeve Compiler & Optimizer Dr. Lawlor Exciting Filler Material!

• Project rough draft code was due on Blackboard Wednesday, November 26th.  (2-week late due date: December 10, scored at 50% off.)
• HW9 was posted on NetRun, and due Monday, November 24th.
• HW8 was posted on NetRun, and due Wednesday, November 12th.
• Project topic writeups are due on Blackboard by midnight on Friday November 14.
  

     November  
  Mo Tu We Th Fr  
   3  4  5  6  7  
  10 11 12 13 14 <- Project topic writeup due 
  17 18 19 20 21  
  24 25 26 27 28 <- Rough draft code due, Thanksgiving break
  
     December
  Mo Tu We Th Fr
   1  2  3  4  5
   8  9 10 11 12 <- Presentations, last day of class
  15 16 17 18 19 <- Final exam, final code due
  22 23 24 25 26
  29 30 31 

• HW7 was posted on NetRun, and due Friday, October 31th.
• HW6 was posted on NetRun, and due Friday, October 17th.
• HW5 was posted on NetRun, and due Wednesday, October 8th.
• HW4 was posted on NetRun, and due Wednesday, October 1st.
• HW3 was posted on NetRun, and due Wednesday, September 24th.
• HW2 was posted on NetRun, and due Wednesday, September 17th.
• HW1 was posted on NetRun, and due Wednesday, September 10th. Just get a NetRun account, then log in to NetRun, and HW1 should be listed at the bottom of the screen under CS 301 (Fall 2008). If you don't get your password, or you can get it but don't see CS 301 or HW1 listed, please email me!

Links

• Lecture Notes:
  • 12_12_review, Course Review for Final Exam modified 2008-12-12
  • 12_03_operating_system, Syscalls and Operating System Calls from Assembly modified 2008-12-03
  • 12_01_gpu, Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) Programming modified 2008-12-01
  • 11_26_biology, Biological "Machine Code" modified 2008-11-26
  • 11_21_sse_branches, Branching from SIMD Code modified 2008-11-21
  • 11_19_sse_C++, A nice C++ interface for SSE operations modified 2008-11-19
  • 11_17_sse_speed, Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) Parallel Floats modified 2008-11-17
  • 11_14_fp_sse, Faster Floating Point with SSE: Streaming SIMD Extensions modified 2008-11-17
  • 11_12_fp_speed, Speed of Floating-Point Operations and Weird Floats modified 2008-11-17
  • 11_07_fp_bits, Bits used to Implement Floating-Point Numbers modified 2008-11-10
  • 11_05_floating_point, Floating-Point Arithmetic modified 2008-11-05
  • 11_03_big_vs_small, Tradeoffs Between Big and Small Variables, and Loop Unrolling modified 2008-11-03
  • 10_31_memory, Speed of Memory Access modified 2008-11-17
  • 10_29_midterm_review, Post-Midterm Review modified 2008-10-29
  • 10_27_perf_examples, Performance-Improvement Examples modified 2008-10-27
  • 10_24_performance, Measuring Performance via the Scientific Method modified 2008-10-27
  • 10_20_review, Course Review for Midterm modified 2008-10-20
  • 10_17_signed_unsigned, Signed vs Unsigned Numbers modified 2008-10-17
  • 10_15_add_multiply, Implementing Addition, Multiplication, and so on modified 2008-10-17
  • 10_13_malloc, Memory Allocation Using 'malloc' modified 2008-10-13
  • 10_08_inline, "Inline" Assembly: Mixing Assembly and C++ modified 2008-10-08
  • 10_06_structs, Structures and Classes modified 2008-10-06
  • 10_03_linking, Receiving Calls from C/C++: The Linker modified 2008-10-03
  • 10_01_memory_review, Review & Survey of Memory Access modified 2008-10-01
  • 09_29_callret, Stack Frames, and Call and Return modified 2008-09-29
  • 09_24_pointers, Pointers, Pointer Arithmetic, and Messy Uncertain Death modified 2008-09-24
  • 09_22_loops, Complex Control Flow: Real C++ Loops modified 2008-09-22
  • 09_19_branching, Elsewhere: Calling Functions and Branching in Assembly modified 2008-09-19
  • 09_17_assembly, Assembly! modified 2008-11-17
  • 09_15_endian, Names: Big and Little Endian Memory Access modified 2008-09-15
  • 09_12_tables, Table-Driven Programming and Machine Code modified 2008-09-12
  • 09_10_bases, Base Conversion: Binary and Hexadecimal modified 2008-09-10
  • 09_08_bitwise, Bitwise Operations modified 2008-09-08
  • 09_05_counting, Digital Binary Computation with Fingers and Circuits modified 2008-09-05
• NetRun is a network-accessible way to compile and run code from inside any web browser. You'll need to activate your account and get a password from the NetRun Password Reset page. You'll then be emailed a password so you can log in to NetRun.

  We'll be using this for all the homeworks, so get an account and try the system out! Read the NetRun Help. Do send me bug reports!

  In particular, if the bottom of your NetRun page is missing the following 301 stuff, send me an email!

  ---

  • CS 301: Homepage (Fall 2008)
• Course syllabus which includes dates to remember, the grading policy, and a course outline.
• Dr. Hartman's 2003 CS301 page has a good set of links to reference documentation.

Documentation

• x86_64: Cheat Sheet.
• x86: Cheat Sheet.  The Intel Software Developer's Manuals are incredibly long, boring, and complete--they give all the nitty-gritty details. Volume 1 lists the processor registers in Section 3.4.1. Volume 2 lists all the x86 instructions in Section 3.2.  Volume 3 gives the performance monitoring registers. There's also a good Pentium 4 Microarchitecture Whitepaper from the Intel Tehnology Journal.  For Linux, the System V ABI gives the calling convention on page 39. Also see the Intel hall of fame for historical info.
  
• PowerPC: Cheat Sheet.
  
• Free C/C++ compilers:
  • On Windows, Microsoft Visual C++ is the standard compiler. Visual C++ 2008 "Express Edition" is free for download directly from Microsoft (400MB). (This only gets you standard C++; to write Windows code you also need the platform SDK.) See my page on linking NASM assembly with Visual C++.
  • Code::blocks is a free, downloadable Windows IDE based on gcc.
  • For Mac OS X machines, Apple's Xcode is the usual IDE. It's free from Apple.
  • For Linux or other UNIX machines, you should either already have gcc/g++ installed, or else it should be easy to install from your distribution. In Ubuntu, "sudo apt-get install pentium-builder".

O. Lawlor, ffosl@uaf.edu
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