This page collects reading and class material by topic. Readings should be completed in preparation for the accompanying class meeting.

Contents:

Textbooks

At least one copy of each text is available in the microfocus for use within the CS department area. Please do not remove them from the lab areas. Return them to the shelf when you are done.

We use one primary textbook that you should acquire:

  • CSAPP 3e: key text, need 3rd edition, microfocus has 2 copies
    Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, 3/E. (3rd edition, significant changes since 2nd)
    Bryant and O’Hallaron, Pearson, 2016. ISBN-13: 9780134092669.
    You need the 3rd edition. See the errata.
    “Global” 3rd editions mostly work, but have some additional errors (not listed on that page).

We provide and use other textbooks mainly during the first 1/3 of the course:

We recommend a good reference on the C programming language. There are many online resources of various quality. One classic book is:

How to read for CS 240

CS 240 moves quickly and covers a lot of ground. To make class time effective, students should be ready to hit the ground running. Class meetings and group exercises will assume cursory familiarity with basic ideas from assigned readings posted on the course schedule. Reading before class to learn basic mechanics frees up more time in class to apply or debug your understanding of these mechanics and to consider their deeper implications. Regular reading quizzes will help motivate you to be prepared to participate.

Bonus benefits of reading:

  • Class is more fun if come with a rough idea of where we’re going and what to watch out for along the way.
  • Spending x minutes on reading now often saves multiples times x minutes of puzzlement or debugging later while working on assignments.
  • We get to spend more time in class doing and less time listening to lectures.

Most topics on the course schedule have associated reading. Effective reading for computer science courses demands a staged approach. Aim for two types of reading:

Before class, do an initial reading of the assigned material and try simple exercises in preparation for class.

Do not worry about understanding every last detail.

Do aim to acquire:

  • A big-picture view of the pieces we will consider about this topic.
  • Some familiarity with basic mechanics of the ideas introduced.

To help distinguish core points from secondary concerns during initial reading, each reading is listed with one of two style directives:

  • Read means read for enough detail to do indicated reading exercises. If you do get stuck or confused by some details, do not worry. Make a note and move on. If we do not clear up your confusion in class, ask a question or come to office hours.
  • Skim means read for high-level ideas. Perhaps pick out a couple details that look interesting and accessible. Do not spend much time trying to understand all the details before moving on.

Learning how to identify essential vs. inessential details during a first reading is an important skill that takes time to develop. As the semester progresses, we will leave more of this to you.

Readings assignments may indicate specific exercises to try as you read before class. These are typically practice problems from the reading.

  • Try means work through enough of the exercise to see how the basics work. Do not feel obligated to finish every example. Do what is useful to you. (Do not submit anything.)

We typically highlight exercises that practice mechanics. Feel free to try other practice problems as well. They may require more time and critical thinking. We will explore such interesting examples in class.

Short reading quizzes (administered electronically before class or on paper in class) count toward your grade. They will be short and similar in style to reading exercises, focused on basic concepts and mechanics. Sometimes things are just too busy. We will drop the lowest 20% of your reading quiz grades.

After class, revisit readings in more depth and try more practice problems to work out details as needed.

More advice

Our main text (CSAPP) sometimes goes into more detail than we will cover, so learning to “read around” extra detail is a useful skill, especially in your pre-class reading.

When reading from CSAPP:

  • “Asides” are optional. If you read them, skim them.
  • “New to C?” blocks can be useful, but usually only if they are short.
  • Some sections (e.g., 2.2 - 2.4 on integer and floating point representations) can be too dense for our purposes. We try steer you around them, but if you find other things getting dense, flip to another reading or just make a note and jump ahead.
  • This book really shines with later material about machine/assembly language, caching, memory management, and other topics. We use it intermittently in the first section of the course, then extensively for the latter two.

Tia Newhall (Swarthmore College) has more good advice on reading computer science textbooks.

Material by Topic

topic the plan

← Thursday, 1 September

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

  • Read: Syllabus
  • Skim: CSAPP 1.0 - 1.7, 1.9.2 - 1.10

Computer Hardware Implementation

topic digital logic

← Thursday, 1 September - Thursday, 8 September

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

Reading Quiz

By our second class meeting, you should be familiar with at least the basics of logic gates, notation for Boolean expressions, and a little Boolean algebra.

Alternatives if DDCA is not your style:

topic data as bits

← Monday, 12 September

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

Reading Quiz

How to read

Binary and hexadecimal number systems

Information as bits + context

  • Read: CSAPP 2 - 2.1.2
  • Exercises: CSAPP practice problems 2.1 - 2.4. (Solutions at end of chapter.)
  • Skim: CSAPP 2.1.4 - 2.1.5.

Bitwise Boolean algebra and bit manipulation

  • Read: CSAPP 2.1.6 - 2.1.9 (including the Asides.)
  • Exercises: CSAPP practice problems 2.8, 2.9, 2.14, 2.16
  • Optional: K&R 2.7, 2.9 for C reference

topic integer representation

← Thursday, 15 September

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

Reading Quiz

As you read, focus on the representation of signed integers more than the mechanics of how to convert from integer representation to the representation you know well.

  • Read: DDCA 1.4.5 (pages 15-19), alt. ebook, or on Google Books
  • Alternatives:
    • SCO A.4 - A.5
    • Mechanical approach: Two’s Complement
    • CSAPP’s treatment of number representation is more thorough, but some students find it too dense. Consider reading it if you understand the other material and want more insight.
      • Read: CSAPP 2.2 - 2.2.3.
      • Skim: CSAPP 2.2.4 - 2.2.8.
      • Read: CSAPP 2.3

topic combinational logic

← Monday, 19 September

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

No Reading Quiz!

Karnaugh Maps

Multiplexers and decoders

topic logic for arithmetic, ALU

← Monday, 19 September - Thursday, 22 September

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

No Reading Quiz!

Adders

  • Read one of:
    • DDCA 5.1 - 5.2.1 (pages 233-234) up through Ripple Carry Adders (feel free to skim beyond if you are curious), alt. ebook (ignore Verilog and VHDL)
    • SCO 3.2.3 (Arithmetic Circuits)
    • Digital Circuits: Adders up until Carry Lookahead Adder (feel free to skim beyond if you are curious)

Arithmetic Logic Unit

  • Read one of these to understand the high-level organization of an ALU. We will look at details of a specific ALU design in class.

topic floating point

← Thursday, 22 September - Monday, 26 September

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

No Reading Quiz!

  • Skim one of:
  • If you want more detail (e.g., on denormalization as discussed in class, or many in-depth examples), read CSAPP 2.4.

topic latches, flip-flops, registers

← Monday, 26 September - Thursday, 29 September

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

No Reading Quiz!

topic a simple processor

← Thursday, 29 September - Monday, 3 October

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

No Reading Quiz!

Read for general organization and design points about instruction set architecture and microarchitecture. We will build our own toy architecture in class and lab.

  • Read: Central Processing Unit (Operation section)
  • Read: SCO 2.1 - 2.1.2, 2.2.2, 5.1 - 5.1.2 (stop at “Note that having separate address spaces for instructions and data”), skim 5.1.3 - 5.1.4
  • Alternatives:
    • Read: CSAPP 1.4.1, 2.1.0
    • DDCA 7.3-7.3.3 (alt. ebook) describes a similar microarchitecture for a similar 32-bit ISA, but relies on some detail from an extensive discussion of instruction set architecture in Chappter 6. Our coverage will be more cursory.

Hardware-Software Interface

topic programming with memory

← Thursday, 6 October - Monday, 17 October

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

No Reading Quiz.

General memory model:

  • Read: SCO 2.2.2 - 2.2.3, 5.1.2 (stop at “Note that having separate address spaces for instructions and data”)
  • Read: CSAPP 2.1.0, 2.1.3 - 2.1.4

Mix and match to learn about addresses and pointers in C:

topic reasoning about programs

← Monday, 17 October

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

No Reading Quiz

For later:

topic x86 ISA, assembly

← Monday, 17 October - Thursday, 20 October

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

Reading Quiz

Background

  • Skim: CSAPP 3 - 3.2

Data Movement

  • Read: CSAPP 3.3 - 3.4 (including “New to C?” to help remember those pointers…)
  • Exercises: try CSAPP practice problems 3.1, 3.2. Take a look at practice problem 3.5, but don’t spend too long on it. We’ll try more like this in class.

Arithmetic

  • Read: CSAPP 3.5 - 3.5.4
  • Exercises: try CSAPP practice problems 3.8, 3.9. (Note x <<= 4; is the same as x = x << 4;.)
  • Skim: CSAPP 3.5.5

topic control flow

← Monday, 24 October - Monday, 31 October

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

No Reading Quiz

Comparisons, Tests, and Jumps

  • Read: CSAPP 3.6 - 3.6.4
  • Exercises: Try CSAPP practice problems 3.13 - 3.14. Just consider what operator you’d put in place of COMP or TEST to match the assembly code. (Don’t worry about #define etc. if you don’t remember how macros work.)

Translating ifs and loops

  • Read: CSAPP 3.6.5, 3.6.7
  • Exercises: CSAPP practice problems 3.16, 3.23, 3.24

Translating switch statements

  • Skim: CSAPP 3.6.8, 3.6.6

topic procedures and stacks

← Monday, 31 October - Thursday, 3 November

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

Reading Quiz (for Thursday 3 November)

  • Read: CSAPP 3.7
  • Exercises:
    • Follow the examples in detail.

    • Consider this code:

        call next
next:
  popq %rax

      Describe the (meaning of the) value that gets stored into %rax. Why is there no ret instruction matching the call? Is this code useful? For what? This not how call is typically used, but it is a good test to check if you understand exactly what the call instruction does.

topic buffer overrun exploits

← Thursday, 3 November

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

No Reading Quiz

  • Read: CSAPP 3.10.3
  • Exercises: CSAPP practice problem 3.46.

topic data structures

← Monday, 7 November

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

No Reading Quiz

  • Read: CSAPP 3.8 - 3.10.1

Abstractions for Practical Systems

topic memory hierarchy and cache

← Thursday, 10 November - Thursday, 17 November

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

Reading Quiz for First Class Day of Cache Material

  • Skim: CSAPP 1.5-1.6, 6.1
  • Read 6.2-6.4.3

For Second Class Day of Cache Material:

  • Read 6.4-6.5
  • As an informal (no grade) reading quiz, take a look at 1a and 1b in the upcoming lab assignment. We’ll see similar examples in class.

topic exceptional control flow

← Monday, 21 November

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

  • Read: CSAPP 8.1

topic operating systems, process model

← Monday, 21 November - Monday, 28 November

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

  • Read: CSAPP 1.7, 8.2 - 8.4

topic shells and signals

← Monday, 28 November

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

topic virtual memory

← Monday, 28 November - Thursday, 1 December

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

  • Read: CSAPP 9.0 - 9.7

topic dynamic memory allocation

← Monday, 5 December - Thursday, 8 December

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

  • Read: CSAPP 9.9
  • Skim: CSAPP 9.10 - 9.12

topic compilers, runtime systems, Java

← Thursday, 8 December - Monday, 12 December

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference:

topic beyond 240

← Monday, 12 December

In-class material (slides)

Preparation and reference: