2010 CS 301 - Assembly Language

Meets MWF 3:30-4:30 PM
Room 106 Chapman Building
University of Alaska Fairbanks

CS F301-F01
3.0 Credits, Fall 2010
Prerequisite: CS 201 (Programming)

Instructor: Dr. O. Lawlor
lawlor@alaska.edu, 474-7678
Office: 201E Chapman
Office Hours: 11:30-1:00 TR (plus!)

Announcements

Final exam scores and course grades are posted on NetRun. Thanks for a fun semester!
A few students wanted their final projects available on this website:
- An very entertaining little choose your own adventure text game, by Eric Martinsen. Download his 64-bit x86 assembly source; it's also listed under Example Problems on NetRun as "TextAdventure".
- A working Enigma machine encryption/decryption simulator, by Weston Davey. Download his 64-bit x86 source code; or on NetRun as "EnigmaAsm" and "EnigmaCpp".
- A Linux music synthesizer using the PC BIOS speaker, by Eric Lundell. Download his 32-bit Linux source code.
Project 2 in-class presentations were on Monday, Dec 13. The rough draft code was due at midnight that day on Blackboard.
HW9 was due at midnight on Friday, December 10.
HW8 was posted on NetRun, and due at midnight on Wednesday, November 24; the day before Thanksgiving. Lectures Monday and Wednesday were cancelled due to weather.
HW7 was posted on NetRun, and due at midnight on Monday, November 15.
Project 1 final code was due Friday, November 12 by midnight on Blackboard. This should be well commented, have good programming style, and work properly. Rough draft comments are on NetRun.
Project 1 rough draft code was due Wednesday, November 3 by midnight on Blackboard.
HW6 was posted on NetRun, and due at midnight on Monday, November 1.
The midterm exam was in class Wednesday, October 20. Grades are on NetRun.
HW5 was posted on NetRun, and due at midnight on Monday, October 18.
HW4 was posted on NetRun, and due at midnight on Monday, October 11.
HW3 was posted on NetRun, and due at midnight on Friday, October 1.
HW2 was posted on NetRun, and due at midnight on Friday, September 23.
HW1 was posted on NetRun, and due at midnight on Friday, September 17.
HW0 was posted on NetRun, and due at midnight on Friday, September 10.
The first class is this Friday, Sept 3, 3:30pm. Before class, get a NetRun account, then log in to NetRun, and HW0 should be listed at the bottom of the screen under CS 301 (Fall 2010). If you don't get your password, or you can get it but don't see CS 301 or HW0 listed, please email me.

Links

Lecture Notes:
- 12_10_review, Course Review for Final Exam modified 2010-12-10
- 12_08_multiprecision, Multi-Precision Arithmetic modified 2010-12-08
- 12_08_gpu, Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) Programming modified 2010-12-08
- 12_06_future, Beyond Turing: Quantum and Adiabatic Computers modified 2010-12-06
- 12_03_dynamic_translation, Dynamic Binary Translation: Making Machine Code at Runtime modified 2010-12-03
- 12_01_PowerPC, PowerPC Assembly Language modified 2010-12-01
- 11_19_java_bytecode, Java Bytecode: Stack-based Machine Code modified 2010-11-19
- 11_17_transforms, Swapping Operations for Speed: Strength Reduction modified 2010-11-17
- 11_15_compiler, Compiler "Hints" to speed up code modified 2010-11-12
- 11_12_timers, Performance Analysis with Timers modified 2010-11-12
- 11_08_interrupts, System Calls modified 2010-11-08
- 11_05_pre_sse, non-SSE floating point: stack based x87 modified 2010-11-05
- 11_03_sse_performance, High-Performance Floating Point with SSE "ps" modified 2010-11-03
- 11_01_inline_asm, "Inline" Assembly: Mixing Assembly and C++ modified 2010-11-01
- 10_27_sse, x86 Floating Point Assembly: SSE modified 2010-10-27
- 10_22_float, Floating-Point Numbers: Format, Roundoff modified 2010-10-25
- 10_18_review, Course Review for Midterm modified 2010-10-18
- 10_15_struct_and_class, C++ Structs and Classes in Assembly modified 2010-10-15
- 10_13_linker, Linking Assembly and C++ (or C or Fortran or...) modified 2010-10-15
- 10_08_asm_io, String Input and Output in Assembly modified 2010-10-08
- 10_06_the_stack, The Stack modified 2010-10-06
- 10_04_malloc, Calling 'malloc' to Allocate Memory modified 2010-10-04
- 10_01_memory, Memory Access in Assembly Language modified 2010-10-01
- 09_29_swar, Conditional Logic without Jumps modified 2010-09-29
- 09_24_weird_jumps, Creative Uses of the Jump Instruction modified 2010-09-24
- 09_22_controlflow, Flags & Control Flow in Assembly modified 2010-10-07
- 09_20_functions_parameters, Calling Functions and Passing Parameters in Assembly modified 2010-09-20
- 09_17_assembly, Assembly Language (at long last!) modified 2010-09-24
- 09_15_machine_code, Switch Statements and CPU Machine Code modified 2010-09-15
- 09_13_tables, Table-Driven Programming modified 2010-09-13
- 09_10_hex, Bits in an Integer, and Hex Conversions modified 2010-09-10
- 09_03_bits, Digital Binary Computation with Fingers and Circuits modified 2010-09-03
NetRun is my network-accessible program 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 2010)
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 and official ABI (function call and register info on page 21). We'll mostly be covering 64-bit x86 assembly in this course.
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.
PowerPC: Cheat Sheet.
Free C/C++ compilers:
- On Windows, Microsoft Visual C++ is the standard compiler. Visual C++ "Express Edition" is free for download directly from Microsoft (400MB). This only gets you standard C++; to write Windows code be sure to download 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, lawlor@alaska.edu
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