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, Mert Cokelek, Nafiseh Jabbari Tofighi, Osman Batur Ince, Beyza Erdogan, Eda Guven, Emir Gencer, Sinan Aghayev.

                                           
                                                           

Time and Location

Lectures: Monday, Wednesday at 16:00-17:10 (Tower Second Floor)
Labs: Friday at 16:00-17:40 (Lab A) (SNA B149), 12:00-13:40 (Lab B) (SNA B242)

Reference Books

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

Schedule

Date Topic Notes
Feb 27 Introduction. Course logistics, A tour of C programs (slides) (code) B&O 1

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
Mar 1 Bits and Bytes, Representing and Operating on Integers (slides) (code) B&O 2.2-2.3

Additional Readings:
Mar 3 Bootcamp: Programming with C and Git basics (slides)
Mar 6 Bits and Bitwise Operators (slides) (code) B&O 2.1
Mar 8 Floating point (slides) (code)
Assg0 out: Getting Started with Unix and C		 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:
Mar 10 Lab 1: The Linux Shell (slides) MIT MS The Shell
Stanford CS107 Unix videos 1-15, 24, 25
Mar 13 Chars and Strings in C (slides) (code) K&R 1.9, 5.5, Appx B3
Mar 15 More Strings, Pointers (slides) (code)
Assg0 in, Assg1 out: Strings in C		 K&R 1.6, 5.5, Essential C 3 (strings and string.h library functions, The mechanics of pointers and arrays)
Mar 17 Lab 2: Bits, Ints and Floats, Vim (slides) MIT MS Editors (Vim)
Stanford CS107 Unix videos 28
Mar 20 Arrays and Pointers (slides) (code) K&R 5.2-5.5, Essential C 6 (Advanced pointers)
Mar 22 The Stack and The Heap (slides) K&R 5.6-5.9, Essential C 6 (The heap)
Mar 24 Lab 3: C-Strings and Valgrind (slides) Stanford CS107 Unix videos 26
Mar 27 Realloc, Memory Bugs (slides) (code) K&R 5.6-5.9, Essential C 6 (The Heap)
Mar 29 void *, Generics (slides) (code)
Assg1 in, Assg2 out: Heap Management		 K&R 5.6-5.9, Essential C 6 (The Heap)
Mar 31 Lab 4: Arrays/Pointers and GDB (slides) Stanford CS107 Unix videos 27
Harvard CS50 short on GDB
Apr 3 Function Pointers (slides) (code) K&R 5.11
Apr 5 const, Structures (slides) (code) K&R 6.1-6.7
Apr 7 No lab this week
Apr 10 Compiling C programs (slides) (code) Stanford Unix Programming Tools 1
Apr 12 Introduction to x86-64, Data Movement (slides) (code)
Assg 2 in		 B&O 3.1-3.4

Additional reading:
Apr 14 Lab 5: Structs, Working with multiple files, writing your own Makefiles
Apr 17 No class - Spring break
Apr 19 No class - Spring break
Apr 21 No lab this week - Spring break
Apr 24 Arithmetic and Logic Operations (slides) B&O 3.5-3.6
Apr 26 x86-64 Control Flow (slides) B&O 3.6.1-3.6.2
Apr 28 No labs this week
May 1 No class - Labor and Solidarity Day
May 3 More Control Flow (slides)
Assg3 out: Defusing a Binary Bomb		 B&O 3.6.3-3.6.8
May 5 Lab 6: Machine Programming with Assembly (slides)
May 8 x86-64 Procedures (slides) (code) B&O 3.7
May 10 Data and Stack Frames (slides) B&O 3.8-3.9
May 12 Lab 7: Runtime Stack
May 15 No class - Elections
May 17 Security Vulnerabilities (slides) (code)
Assg3 in, Assg4 out: Buffer Overflow Attacks		 B&O 3.10
Additional Reading: Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit, Aleph One
May 19 No labs this week - Youth and Sports Day
May 22 Cache Memories (slides) B&O 6.1-6.4.2
Demos:
Cache Simulator
May 24 More Cache Memories (slides) B&O 6.4-6.7
May 26 Lab 8: Memory organization
May 29 No class - Presidential Elections
May 31 Optimization (slides) (code) B&O 5
June 2 Lab 9: Code Optimization
TBA Final Exam