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CS255: Course Description and Objective

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• Goal of CS255
  • Objective:

    The objective of this course is to impart an understanding of computer programming at the computer instruction level that allow students to understand what exactly is going on when a computer executes a program. Overview of the course topics: A system programming language (C) (a high level language designed for system programming) Data representation (how different kinds of information are stored inside the computer) Assembler programming (how different statements - assignment, if, if-else, while, for, ... - are written in assembler instructions)

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• Course description
  • We will first discuss the C programming language

  • Then we will present the architectural design of modern (Von-Neumann) computers and their (machine) instruction sets to support programming in high level programming languages (C).

  • Topics discussed:

    C programming High level view of computer architecture CPU structure. Memory organization Motorola 68000 assembler programming: Data storage for simple data types, arrays, structures (objects) and linked lists. Addressing modes and their use to to access the data structures. Use of stacks for procedure call and return. Implementing stacks with index registers. Detail discussion of procedure call and return and parameter passing mechanism. Recursion. How recursion is implemented by allocating and deallocate storage space for parameters, local variables and return addresses on the program stack.

    There will be an extensive programming project in the M68000 assembly language

    If time permits, we will also study the SPARC (Scalable Processor ARChitecture - a RISC CPU) architecture.

    Warning:

    This is a highly technical course. (Not intended for non-CS-majors)

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