15 213 18 213 Introduction to Computer Systems Greg Ganger Greg Kesden and Dave O Hallaron Carnegie Mellon University Fall 2014 1 Organization Class Web page http www cs cmu edu 213 Electronic copies of class handouts and lecture slides can be found on the class Web page Teaching staff email address 15 213 staff cs cmu edu Please send email to this address whenever you have questions about the course Don t send mail to individual staff members except to schedule one on one meetings Any emails you send to this address will be received by all members of the teaching staff Using it allows us to give you the fastest and most consistent responses to your questions We will not be using Blackboard or any other message board Instructors Greg Ganger ganger ece cmu edu CIC 2208 412 268 1297 Greg Kesden gkesden cs cmu edu GHC 7711 412 268 1590 Dave O Hallaron droh cs cmu edu GHC 7517 412 268 8199 Lecture 1 Tue and Thu 1 30 2 50pm DH 2315 Ganger and O Hallaron Lecture 2 Tue and Thu 6 30 7 50pm WeH 7500 Kesden Feel free to attend either lecture Recitations A Mon B Mon C Mon D Mon E Mon F Mon G Mon H Mon I Mon J Mon K Mon L Mon M Mon 10 30 11 20 10 30 11 20 11 30 12 20 12 30 1 20 1 30 2 20 1 30 2 20 2 30 3 20 3 30 4 20 10 30 11 20 11 30 12 20 12 30 1 20 1 30 2 20 2 30 3 20 SH 222 PH 226B SH 220 DH 2105 PH A19 WEH 5302 WEH 5302 PH 125C WEH 5310 WEH 5310 WEH 5310 WEH 5310 PH 226B Office Hours Please see the class Web page for instructor and TA office hours 1 2 Objectives Our aim in 15 213 is to help you become a better programmer by teaching you the basic concepts underlying all computer systems We want you to learn what really happens when your programs run so that when things go wrong as they always do you will have the intellectual tools to solve the problem Why do you need to understand computer systems if you do all of your programming in high level languages In most of computer science we re pushed to make abstractions and stay within their frameworks But any abstraction ignores effects that can become critical As an analogy Newtonian mechanics ignores relativistic effects The Newtonian abstraction is completely appropriate for bodies moving at less than 0 1c but higher speeds require working at a greater level of detail The following realities are some of the major areas where the abstractions you ve learned in previous classes break down 1 Int s are not integers Float s are not reals Our finite representations of numbers have significant limitations and because of these limitations we sometimes have to think in terms of bit level representations 2 You ve got to know assembly language Even if you never write programs in assembly The behavior of a program cannot be understood sometimes purely based on the abstraction of a high level language Further understanding the effects of bugs requires familiarity with the machine level model 3 Memory matters Computer memory is not unbounded It must be allocated and managed Memory referencing errors are especially pernicious An erroneous updating of one object can cause a change in some logically unrelated object Also the combination of caching and virtual memory provides the functionality of a uniform unbounded address space but not the performance 4 There is more to performance than asymptotic complexity Constant factors also matter There are systematic ways to evaluate and improve program performance 5 Computers do more than execute instructions They also need to get data in and out and they interact with other systems over networks By the end of the course you will understand these realities in some detail As a result you will be prepared to take any of the upper level systems classes at Carnegie Mellon both CS and ECE Even more important you will have learned skills and knowledge that will help you throughout your career 3 Textbook The primary textbook for the course is Randal E Bryant and David R O Hallaron Computer Systems A Programmer s Perspective Second Edition CS APP2e Prentice Hall 2011 2 Please make sure you have the Second Edition which is significantly different from the First Edition published in 2003 In addition we require you to have the following reference book on the C programming language Brian W Kernighan and Dennis M Ritchie The C Programming Language Second Edition Prentice Hall 1988 This is the classic K R book the standard against which all reference manuals are compared It is an essential part of every computer scientist s library 4 Course Organization Your participation in the course will involve five forms of activity 1 Attending the lectures 2 Preparing for and participating in the recitations 3 Doing laboratory assignments 4 Reading the text 5 Taking exams Attendance will not be taken at the lectures or recitation sections You will be considered responsible for all material presented at the lectures and recitations Lectures will cover higher level concepts Recitations will be more applied covering important how to s especially in using tools that will help you do the labs In addition the recitations will help clarify lecture topics and describe exam coverage The textbook contains both practice problems within the chapter text and homework problems at the end of each chapter The intention is that you work on the practice problems as you are reading the book The answers to these problems are at the end of each chapter Our experience has been that trying out the concepts on simple examples helps make the ideas more concrete In addition the class schedule on the class Web page shows specific homework problems with each lecture topic The intention is that you try these out and discuss them in the next recitation You will find that you will get much more out of recitation if you have done some advance preparation The only graded assignments in this class will be a set of seven labs Some of these are fairly short requiring just one week while others are more ambitious requiring several weeks 5 Getting Help For all communication with the teaching staff please send email to 15 213 staff cs cmu edu 3 This mailing list reaches all of the teaching staff When you have questions about assignments please don t send email to individual staff members Use this mailing list instead to maximize your chances of getting a speedy reply We will use the class website http www cs cmu edu 213 as the central repository for all information about the class The lab assignments are offered through a hosted autograding service developed by Dave O
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