CS520
Assembly Language Programming and Machine Organization
Fall 2009

Instructor: P. Hatcher
Office: Kingsbury N229/N221D
Phone: 862-2678
E-mail: hatcher@unh.edu
Office Hours: Mon/Wed 8:15-8:45am and 10:00-10:30am; Fri 10:00-10:30am; or by appointment (send e-mail to request an appointment).

The prerequisite for this course is CS515.

The key goals for the course are to understand program and data representation, to become familiar with assembly language and machine language programming, to understand the impact on software of basic computer architecture concepts such as the memory hierarchy, and to study fundamental system software such as assemblers and linkers.

The University is committed to providing students with documented disabilities equal access to all university programs and facilities. If you think you have a disability requiring accommodations, you must register with Disability Services for Students (DSS). Contact DSS at (603) 862-2607 or visit them in MUB 118. If you have received Accommodation Letters for this course from DSS, please provide me with that information privately so that we can review those accommodations.

Tentative Schedule

  1. week of August 31

  2. week of September 7

  3. week of September 14

  4. week of September 21

  5. week of September 28

  6. week of October 5

  7. week of October 12

  8. week of October 19

  9. week of October 26

  10. week of November 2

  11. week of November 9

  12. week of November 16

  13. week of November 23

  14. week of November 30

  15. week of December 7

  16. week of December 14

Readings

The readings given in the above schedule are recommended but not required. They are intended to be supplementary to the lectures. Everything you need to know for an assignment or an exam will be covered in lecture or laboratory. However, the readings will provide a second presentation of most of the material for the course, in case you find things confusing. For most people, seeing the material twice is very helpful.

Grading

Course grades will be assigned in the following manner:

Laboratories grades will be based upon attendance and effort. All laboratories are based upon the current programming assignment. Each programming assignment will have two labs.

The purpose of the first lab is to help you get started on the assignment. At the end of this lab you will submit your code that you have written so far for the current assignment. Your grade for this lab will largely depend on the effort you make during lab.

The purpose of the second lab is to encourage you to bring nearly finished code to lab for review. At the beginning of this lab you will submit your code that you have written so far for the current assignment. Your code should be substantially complete. That is, the functionality should be fully implemented, but possibly not fully tested and debugged. The grade assigned for a code review will include both the layout and documentation of the code (see below) and the level of functionality attempted so far.

Laboratory sessions are 50 minutes long and will be held on Fridays in Kingsbury N218. Students whose last names begin with A-K will be in one session and students whose last names begin with L-Z will be in the opposite session. Be sure to check the above schedule each week to see which session you are in, either 8:10-9am or 9:10-10am.

The programming assignments are (with tentative due dates):

  1. Convert IEEE floating-point to and from integer: due Sept 13.

  2. Disassemble maTe class files: due Sep 27.

  3. Write an assembler for maTe class files: due Oct 11.

  4. Implement the maTe virtual machine: due Oct 25.

  5. Add a garbage collector to the maTe virtual machine: due Nov 8.

  6. Add just-in-time translation to the maTe virtual machine: due Nov 22.

  7. Modify the maTe garbage collector to be concurrent: due Dec 13.

The programming assignments must be done in C.

Each programming assignment will be worth 100 points. Programming assignments may be handed in late at a penalty of 2 points for one day late, 5 points for two days late, 10 points for three days late, 20 points for four days late, and 40 points for five days late. No program may be turned in more than 5 days late. An assignment is not considered late unless turned in after 8am on the day after the due date.

The grading of programming assignments will be based primarily upon demonstrated correct functionality. That is, you will be awarded points for what your program actually does. Some test cases may be public but others will be hidden, so careful testing will be required.

Points will be deducted from your programming assignment grade if your work is not adequately documented and structured. You must follow the following guidelines:

In addition, lines should not exceed 80 characters when printed using a tabstop width of 8. It is best to not put tabs in your files. Have your editor automatically expand tabs into spaces. It is also best to use a small indentation amount, like 2.

If you have any questions about these rules for program layout, see me in advance, not after your first program review.

The final exam will be comprehensive.

Students receiving at least 65% of the course points are guaranteed at least a C-. Students receiving at least 75% of the course points are guaranteed at least a B-. Students receiving at least 85% of the course points are guaranteed at least an A-.

Textbooks

There is no required textbook for this course.

On reserve in the Kingsbury library:

The purchase of these books is not required, so the local bookstores will not have them. However, if you want your own copy, they are readily available from on-line retailers.

Also you can get on-line access to C references via the UNH library's license for Safari Tech Books. See the website for the Kingsbury Library for more information. Once in Safari, select the Programming category and then select C.

Computer Accounts

agate.cs.unh.edu is the primary computing resources for this course. You should automatically be given an account on this machine. During the semester you may use any other machines that you have access to, but for grading purposes your programs must execute correctly on agate.cs.unh.edu.

Policy on Cheating

All students are expected to do their own work on all assignments. No collaboration is allowed, either with current or prior CS520 students, or anyone else. One general rule to follow is that you may discuss your programs with other students at the concept level but never at the coding level. If you are at all unclear about this general rule, don't discuss your programs with other students at all.

Note that this "no collaboration" policy does not distinguish between the "giver" and the "taker". I consider both parties equally guilty.

In addition, submitting programs that are based upon code retrieved from Internet sources is also explicitly forbidden and will be considered "cheating".

Be aware that I use tools for automatic plagiarism detection that analyze both current and past assignment submissions.

Because so much of your course grade is based upon the programming assignments, I will treat cases of cheating severely. If caught cheating on an assignment, you can expect to (at least) receive a failing grade for the course.

In addition, of course, collaboration is also not allowed on the midterm exam or the final exam.

Last modified on November 22, 2009.

Comments and questions should be directed to hatcher@unh.edu