Course Information
About
This course gives a solid understanding of the principles and abstractions used in computer systems and machine programs using C. Towards this aim, it covers a broad range of topics, providing students with an in-depth perspective and programming experience regarding the basic topics of C language and how programs are formed and executed at the microprocessor-level.
Upon the completion of COMP201, student will be able to (1) demonstrate proficiency in writing C programs that require effective memory management, (2) gain a deep knowledge of the compilation flow and runtime behavior of C programs, (3) have a clear understanding of computer arithmetic in a modern computing system, (4) recognize the relationship between a C program and its assembly translation, and (5) gain a general sense of working in a Unix environment as a power user, getting familiar with shell tools, version control systems, compilers, debuggers, profilers.
The course is taught by Aykut Erdem - the teaching assistants are Ahmed Imam Shah, Amir Mohamad Akhlaghi Gharelar, Farzin Negahbani , Mandana Bagheri Marzijarani, Muhammad Aditya Sasongkoand, and Samet Demir.
Time and Location
Lectures: Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 14:00-14:50 online via Zoom)
Labs: Monday (Lab A), Wednesday (Lab B) at 19:00-19:50, Thursday (Lab C) at 20:00-20:50 (online via Zoom)
Reference Books
- Randal E. Bryant and David R. O’Hallaron, Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition, Pearson, 2016
- The C Programming Language, Kernighan and Ritchie
- Nick Parlante, Essential C, Stanford CS Library, 2003
- Nick Parlante, Julie Zelenski and others, Unix Programming Tools, Stanford CS Library, 2001
- Anish Athalye, Jon Gjengset and Jose Javier Gonzalez Ortiz, The Missing Semester of Your CS Education, MIT, 2020
Policies: All work on assignments must be done individually unless stated otherwise. You are encouraged to discuss with your classmates about the given assignments, but these discussions should be carried out in an abstract way. That is, discussions related to a particular solution to a specific problem (either in actual code or in the pseudocode) will not be tolerated.
In short, turning in someone else’s work, in whole or in part, as your own will be considered as a violation of academic integrity. Please note that the former condition also holds for the material found on the web as everything on the web has been written by someone else.
Communication
The course webpage will be updated regularly throughout the semester with lecture notes, presentations, assignments and important deadlines. All other course related communications will be carried out through Blackboard.
Pre-requisites
COMP201 is open to second-year undergraduate students. Non-COMP students should ask the course instructor for approval before the add/drop period. The prerequisites for this course is COMP 132 - Advanced Programming.
Course Requirements and Grading
Grading will be based on
118 labs (your lowest 3 scores dropped, no make-up) (16%),76 programming assignments (32%) (assg0 2%, the others56% each),1211 quizzes (your lowest 2 scores dropped, no make-up) (10%),- Midterm exam (18%), and
- Final exam (24%)
Schedule
| Date | Topic | Notes |
| Oct 5 | Introduction. Course logistics (slides) (video) | Additional Reading: The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix, Warren Toomey, IEEE Spectrum, 28 Nov 2011 “A damn stupid thing to do”—the origins of C, Arstechnica |
| Oct 7 | A tour of C programs, Bits and Bytes (slides) (code) (video) Assg0 out: Getting Started with Unix and C |
B&O 1 |
| Oct 9 | Representing and Operating on Integers (slides) (code) (video) | B&O 2.2-2.3 Additional Readings:
|
| Oct 5,7,8 | Bootcamp: Programming with C (slides) (video) | |
| Oct 12 | Bits and Bitwise Operators (slides) (code) (video) | B&O 2.1 |
| Oct 14 | Floating point (slides) | B&O 2.4 Additional Reading: What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic, David Goldberg, ACM Computing Surveys, 23(1), 1991 Demos: |
| Oct 16 | More floating point (slides) (code) (video) Assg0 in, Assg1 out: Manipulating Bits |
B&O 2.4 Demos: |
| Oct 12,14,15 | Lab 1: The Linux Shell (slides) | MIT MS The Shell Stanford CS107 Unix videos 1-15, 24, 25 |
| Oct 19 | Chars and Strings in C (slides) (code) (video) | K&R 1.9, 5.5, Appx B3 |
| Oct 21 | More Strings in C, Pointers (slides) (code) (video) | K&R 5.1, Essential C 3 (strings and string.h library functions) |
| Oct 23 | Strings in Memory (slides) (code) | K&R 1.6, 5.5, Essential C 3 (The mechanics of pointers and arrays) |
| Oct 19,21,22 | Lab 2: Bits, Ints and Floats, Vim (slides) | MIT MS Editors (Vim) Stanford CS107 Unix videos 28 |
| Oct 26 | Arrays and Pointers (slides) (code) (video) | K&R 5.2-5.5, Essential C 6 (Advanced pointers) |
| Oct 28 | No class (Republic Day) Assg1 in, Assg2 out: Strings in C |
|
| Oct 30 | The Stack and The Heap (slides) (video) | K&R 5.6-5.9, Essential C 6 (The heap) |
| Oct 26,28,29 | No labs this week (Republic Day) | |
| Nov 2 | Other Heap Allocations, realloc (slides) (code) (video) | K&R 5.6-5.9, Essential C 6 (The Heap) |
| Nov 4 | Generics (slides) (code) (video) | K&R 5.6-5.9, Essential C 6 (The Heap) |
| Nov 6 | Function Pointers (slides) (code) (video) | K&R 5.11 |
| Nov 2,4,5 | Lab 3: C-Strings and Valgrind (slides) | Stanford CS107 Unix videos 26 |
| Nov 9 | More Function Pointers, const (slides) (code) (video) | K&R 5.11, A1 |
| Nov 11 | Structures (slides) (code) (video) Assg2 in, Assg3 out: Heap Management |
K&R 6.1-6.7 |
| Nov 13 | Compiling C programs (slides) (code) (video) | Stanford Unix Programming Tools 1 |
| Nov 9,11,12 | Lab 4: Arrays/Pointers and GDB (slides) | Stanford CS107 Unix videos 27 Harvard CS50 short on GDB |
| Nov 16 | Intro to x86-64 (slides) (code) (video) | B&O 3.1-3.3 Additional reading: An Introduction to 64-bit Computing and x86-64, Jon Stokes, arstechnica.com, 2002 |
| Nov 18 | Data Movement (slides) (video) | B&O 3.4 Additional reading: The story of Mel (Annotated version) |
| Nov 20 | Arithmetic and Logic Operations (slides) (video) | B&O 3.5 |
| Nov 16,18,19 | Lab 5: Working with multiple files, writing your own Makefiles (slides) | |
| Nov 23 | Assembly Execution and %rip (slides) (video) | B&O 3.6.1-3.6.2 |
| Nov 25 | x86-64 Control Flow (slides) (video) | B&O 3.6.3-3.6.8 |
| Nov 27 | More Control Flow (slides) (video) Assg3 in, Assg4 out: Defusing a Binary Bomb |
B&O 3.6.3-3.6.8 |
| Nov 23,25,26 | Lab 6: Machine Programming with Assembly (slides) | |
| Nov 30 | x86-64 Procedures (slides) (video) | B&O 3.7 |
| Dec 2 | More x86-64 Procedures (slides) (code) | B&O 3.7 |
| Dec 4 | Data and Stack Frames (slides) (video) | B&O 3.8-3.9 |
| Nov 30, Dec 2,3 | No lab this week | |
| Dec 5 | Midterm Exam (11:45am) (Midterm Exam Guide) | |
| Dec 7 | Security Vulnerabilities (slides) (video) | B&O 3.10 Additional Reading: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit, Aleph One |
| Dec 9 | Buffer Overflow Exploits, Storage Technologies (slides) (code) (video) | B&O 6.1 |
| Dec 11 | Locality, The Memory Hierarchy (slides) (video) Assg4 in |
B&O 6.2-6.3 |
| Dec 7,9,10 | Lab 7: Runtime Stack (slides) | |
| Dec 14 | No class - Winter break | |
| Dec 16 | No class - Winter break | |
| Dec 18 | No class - Winter break | |
| Dec 14,16,17 | No lab this week - Winter break | |
| Dec 21 | Cache Memories (slides) (code) (video) Assg5 out: Buffer Overflow Attacks |
B&O 6.4-6.7 Demos: Cache Simulator |
| Dec 23 | Debugging and Design (slides) (video) | |
| Dec 25 | Code Optimization (slides) (code) (video) | B&O 5 |
| Dec 21,23,24 | No lab this week | |
| Dec 28 | Linking (slides) (video) | B&O 7 |
| Dec 30 | No class - New years day | |
| Jan 1 | No class - New years day | |
| Dec 28,30,31 | No lab this week | |
| Jan 4 | Managing The Heap (slides) (video) Assg6 out |
B&O 9.9 |
| Jan 6 | More on Managing The Heap (slides) (video) Assg5 in |
B&O 9.9 |
| Jan 8 | Wrap-up (slides) (video) | |
| Jan 4,6,7 | Lab 8: Memory organization (slides) | |
| Jan 19 | Final Exam (6:15pm) (Final Exam Guide) |
Resources
- Stanford CS107 Reader
- COMP201 Coding Style Guide for C Programming
- Unix/Linux Command Reference
- Vi/Vim Cheat Sheet
- Harvard CS61 GIT Guide
- Stanford CS107 Valgrind Guide
- Brown CSCI0330 gdb Cheatsheet
- Stanford CS107 Guide to Make
- Stanford CS107 Guide to x86-64
- CMU 15-213 x86-64 Machine-Level Programming
- Stanford CS107 x86-64 Reference Sheet
