Course Overview

Overview

Welcome to your first course in the software-side of computer systems! Introduce you to an exciting range of materials from the broad field of systems programming, including the basics of how CPUs work, assembly-language programming, higher-level programming in C, the memory hierarchy, disks and I/O, interrupts and exceptions, and little introductions to topics such as virtual memory, networking, concurrency, and parallelism. All very cool stuff that every serious programmer should know!

This course assumes familiarity with basic programming (CS 302, though CS 367 would be better) and a little about how a CPU works (CS 252). You'll be doing a lot of hands-on projects in both assembly (x86) and C (the greatest language ever, naturally), so get ready for a ton of work. If that doesn't sound good, well, tough luck! You're in the wrong profession.

Materials

For learning about computer systems, we recommend coming to class and paying attention. Then, some time after class, read the assigned reading. The associated book chapters are marked in superscript on the main class web page. For example, you'll see that on the first day we cover an Intro to the class; in superscript is the number 1, which means you should read Chapter 1 to really understand what is going on in more detail.

For a text book, we have chosen an awesome book out of Carnegie-Mellon known as Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective . Many books in CS are frankly not worth buying; this one is, as the authors have done a magnificent job pulling together a huge amount of fascinating material. It will help you learn all about the details of modern computer systems. Buy it!

You'll also need the The C Programming Language book, usually called K&R (after its famous authors, one being the inventor of the C language!). This book is on virtually every Computer Scientist's bookshelf, and should be on yours as well.

Mailing List and Piazza

Important announcements will be sent to the class mailing list
compsci354-3-s18@lists.wisc.edu. So please read your mail frequently (particularly around project and exam time)! You are responsible for the material sent to that list. Note that the class list is automatically generated based on who is enrolled in the class. Enroll in Piazza for posting questions about class contents and getting it answered by instructor, TAs and fellow students. And also check piazza frequently to stay up to date.

Projects

Projects are worth 45% of your grade. See the projects page for project handouts and due dates. As part of the course, you will complete a number of programming assignments aka projects. You should perform these projects on PCs running the Linux operating system.

The projects are a fundamental part of this course. Most projects require a significant amount of time; do not procrastinate! It is likely they will take longer than you expect. Do not wait until the day before the assignment is due to start. These assignments should be started pretty much when they are handed out. All information necessary to complete the assignments will be available from the class web page.

As stated above, all of the assignments will be in C or x86 assembly. We will help introduce these a bit but of course the real learning of anything as awesome as a new language is done on your own. Get to work!

For the projects, you will primarily be graded on how well your implementation works. We will test your program on a suite of input sets. Your grade will be based on how many of the tests your application passes; we will also briefly examine your code to ensure that you followed the specifications of the assignment.

Also, don't cheat (duh).

Exams

Exams are worth 40% of your final grade. There will be two exams to test your knowledge and conceptual understanding and each will be worth 20% of your grade. The exams will be closed book, and will cover material from class, worksheets and the projects. Read more about exams here.

Worksheets

Worksheets are worth 15% of your grade. There will be one worksheet per week (mostly). These worksheets will be helpful in testing yourself to see if you really understand what is going on in class. Also, these worksheets will help you to better prepare for the exams.