EECS 213: Introduction to Computer Systems, Spring, 2016

Instructor:Peter A. Dinda (Office Hours: Thursdays, 9-noon or by appointment, Tech L463)
Teaching Assistants: Conor Hetland (Office Hours: Sundays, 1-5, Wilkinson Lab)
Maciej Swiech (Office Hours: Mondays, 3-7, Ford 2-221 and Ford Commons)
Daniel Stein (Office Hours: Wednesdays, 3-4:30 and Fridays, 1:30-4, Wilkinson Lab)
Lecture Time:Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2-3:20pm
Lecture Location:Tech Auditorium
Recitation Time:Mondays, 7pm
Recitation Location:Tech M345
Enrollment Limit:80 (currently have 92)

EECS 213 is a required core course in the Computer Science curriculum in both McCormick and Weinberg. It is also a required course for CS minors in both schools. 213 can also be taken for credit within the Computer Engineering curriculum.

Communication

We may use Canvas to report grades and for homework hand-in, but for nothing else. For critical announcements, we will send email to the addresses that CAESAR maintains.

For discussion, we will use Piazza: EECS 213 Piazza Site. Directing your questions to Piazza will likely produce the fastest response, and everyone else in the class will also benefit.

Accounts, Remote Access, Getting Started with Unix

  • You will have a Linux account on the Wilkinson and TLab machines. Both labs are very convenient for working together. Mostly, though, you'll be using those machines as terminals. You should also be able to use NUIT labs near Tech.
  • You will also have a Linux account on private servers we have set up. These accounts will be discussed in class.
  • We recommend you use ssh (remote login) or VNC (remote graphical desktop) to access the class servers. To get started with VNC, ssh into the server and run ~cs213/HANDOUT/vnc.pl. You can also use X11 tunneled over SSH. You may also find tmux to be useful.
  • If you haven't used Linux or Unix before:
  • Introduction to the Linux environment on our server (Peter Dinda) (YouTube)
  • Introduction to Unix (James Whang and Adel Lahlou) (YouTube)
  • The first recitation will be an introduction to Unix
  • The book's student site (see below) has additional pointers

    • Handouts

  • Syllabus (pdf)

  • Physics To Logic (pdf)
  • Unix Systems Programming In A Nutshell (pdf)
  • Sockets In A Nutshell (pdf)
  • Concurency (pdf)

    • Programming Assignments

  • Data Lab (pdf) (Out: 3/31, In: 4/19)
  • Bomb Lab (pdf) (Out: 4/19, In: 5/5)
  • Attack Lab (pdf) (Out: 5/9, In: 5/19)
    We have reduced the scope of this lab to make up for the delay in making it available. We have also added extra credit to it.
  • SETI Lab (Parallelism Lab) (pdf) (Out: 5/19, In: Now 6/3)

    • Homework Assignments

  • HW 1: Integer and Floating Point Number Representations (pdf) (Out: 4/5, In: 4/14)
  • HW 2: De-compiling Assembly Code (pdf) (Out: 4/14, In: 4/28)
  • HW 3: Memory and Cache (pdf) (Out: 4/28, In: 5/17)
  • HW 4: Virtual Memory and I/O (pdf) (Out: 5/24, In: 6/2)

    • Exams

  • Midterm: Wednesday, May 4, 6pm, Annenberg Hall G21
    Covers lectures 1-9 and related reading/materials in syllabus
    Midterm Review in Recitation, Monday, May 2, 7pm, Tech M345
  • Final: Monday, June 6, 9am, Tech Auditorium
    Covers lectures 10-20, and related reading/materials in syllabus

    • Lecture-related pointers

  • My Lecture Slides
    I am not using slides all that much. Nonetheless, the lectures for which I have used slides will appear below. You may also find the CMU lecture slides (see below) to be useful.
  • General lecture slides and other materials for the CMU version of the class
  • Java applets showing how gates are built from CMOS transistors
  • Java simulators of logic and more complex circuits

    • Resources

  • The Book's Student Site
    Contains many useful FAQs, Primers, etc.
  • Make Introduction (pdf)
  • Gdb commands (pdf)
  • Gdb manual (html)
  • An amazing online disassembler
  • The ELF Format (pdf)
  • Comparison with GAS format and Intel's assembler format (text)
  • The Intel Architecture Manuals and the AMD Architecture Manuals
  • Compare and contrast with the beautiful and much mourned DEC Alpha, and with the very much alive and kicking ARM architecture that powers your phone and tablet
  • Overview of the Linux Kernel (pdf) (This is very old, but still a good intro)
  • Cygwin Unix Emulation Environment for Windows
  • Wilson, P., et al, Dynamic Storage Allocation: A Survey and Critical Review, International Workshop on Memory Managment, September, 1995. (pdf)
    • Peter Dinda
    Last modified: Tue May 24 16:54:46 CDT 2016