CS 210: Assembly Language and Systems Programming (Spring 2008)

Instructor: Allan Cruse
cruse@usfca.edu
Phone: (415) 422-6562
Office: 212 Harney Science Center
Office Hours: (see my homepage)

"Assembly language hides nothing, and withholds no power."
_{-- Jeff Duntemann, "Assembly Language Step-by-Step," John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2000), p. xxiii.}

• This course introduces students to computer programming at the machine language level, as a means of
  exploring some basic concepts of microcomputer architecture, system software and peripheral hardware.
  It is comprised of lectures, readings, discussions, demonstrations, consultations, assigned design projects
  and scheduled exams.
  
  
• The course will focus primarily on the assembly language for Intel Pentium processors running the Linux
  operating system and will use the GNU assembler and program development tools. Students are presumed
  to have prior experience with computer programming in at least one high-level language (such as C/C++/java),
  and to be familiar with basic operating system commands (e.g., as covered in CS 110/112).
  
  
• Class meetings will be held in the Michael D. Kudlick computer classroom (Room 235, Harney Science Center)
  which affords convenient opportunities for combining formal instruction with "hands-on" programming exercises.
  This facility, a gift of USF alumnus Alfred S. Chuang ('82), was opened in Fall 2002.
  
  

Kip R. Irvine, Assembly Language Programming for Intel-Based Computers (Fifth Edition)
Prentice-Hall, Inc. (2007), ISBN 0-13-238310-1

"One of my goals is to help students approach programming problems with a machine-level mind set... [and] give
students the first-hand experience of writing software in an environment that teaches them how the computer really
works... The present edition includes topics that lead naturally into subsequent courses in computer architecture,
operating systems, and compiler writing."
-- Kip Irvine, Florida International University


Robert Love, Linux System Programming
O'Reilly Media, Inc. (2007), ISBN 0-596-00958-5

"The last several years have witnessed a trend in application programming away from system-level programming
and toward very high-level development, either through web software (such as JavaScript or PHP), or through
managed code (such as C# or Java). This development, however, does not foretell the death of system programming.
Indeed, someone still has to write the JavaScript interpreter and the C# runtime, which is itself system programming."
-- Robert Love, Google, Inc.

• You will know the set of fundamental operations a computer can perform.
• You will know how to build complex computations out of simple operations.
• You will be able to "see through" code written in a high-level language.
• You will gain the capability to fully utilize features in modern CPUs.
• You will lay the conceptual ground for understanding later CS courses.
• You will acquire a skill-set of practical value in professional practice.

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Resources

• The official GNU Assembler manual (GAS) -- updated link on 05/27/2008
• Brennan's Guide to Inline Assembly
• The Linux Assembly HOWTO manual
• Roger Jegerlehner's Intel Assembler 80x86 Code Table
• Jialong He's LINUX System Call Quick Reference (.pdf)
• Official IA-32 Programmer Reference Manuals, Intel Corporation
• Official Data Sheet for the Dallas Semiconductor DS12887 Real-Time Clock and CMOS Memory
• A typical CMOS RAM Memory-map for PC/AT compatible machines (at www.bioscentral.com)
• Industry document: APPLE Human Interface Guidelines Apple Computer, Inc.

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Systems Software

• Utility program: ljpages.cpp (a tool that submits your program source to a laser printer)
• Utility program: dump.cpp (a tool that displays the contents of any file in hex and ascii)
• Utility program: fileview.cpp (a navigation tool for viewing the contents of binary files)
• Utility program: iopl3.cpp (a tool by Alex Fedosov that lets user programs do direct I/O)

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Readings

• Week 1: Love, Chapter 1: Introduction and Essential Concepts; and Irvine, Chapter 1: Basic Concepts
• Week 2: Love, Chapter 2: File-I/O; and Irvine, Chapter 2: IA-32 Processor Architecture
• Week 3: Love, Chapter 3: Buffered I/O; and Irvine, Chapter 3: Assembly Language Fundamentals
• Week 4: Love, Chapter 4: Advanced File I/O; and Irvine, Chapter 4: Data Transfers, Addressing, and Arithmetic
• Week 5: No new assignment; review for Midterm Exam I.
• Week 6: Love, Chapter 5: Process Management; and Irvine, Chapter 5: Procedures
• Week 7: Love, Chapter 6: Advanced Process Management; and Irvine, Chapter 6: Conditional Processing
• Week 8: Love, Chapter 7: File and Directory Management; and Irvine, Chapter 7: Integer Arithmetic
• Week 9: Love, Chapter 8: Memory Management; and Irvine, Chapter 8: Advanced Procedures
• Week 10: No new assignment; review for Midterm Exam II.
• Week 11: Love, Chapter 9: Signals; and Irvine, Chapter 9: Strings and Arrays
• Week 12: Love, Chapter 10: Time; and Irvine, Chapter 12: High-Level Language Interface
• Week 13: Irvine, Chapter 17: Floating-Point Processing and Instruction Encoding
• Week 14: No new assignment: complete programming project
• Week 15: No new assignment: review for Final Examination

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Handouts

• 0203-210-01: Course syllabus (PDF)
• What Is Assembly Language? (Powerpoint Slides)
• Simple "high-level" programming example: demo1.c
• Example rewritten in assembler language: demo2.s
• Separate function (needed by 'demo2.s'): sprintf.s
• Demo program: out2file.cpp shows how a C++ program can create a file with standard library functions
• Demo program: out2file.s showing how the same task can be accomplished using assembly language
• Demo program: myargs.s introduces use of a 'program-loop' to display each commamd-line argument
• Demo program: add.s converts its command-line argument-strings into integers, then reports their total -- modified on 02/08/2008
• Demo program: linkdemo.s shows how an assembly language application calls an 'external' procedure
• External routine: dumpregs.s this file defines the procedure that gets called from our 'linkdemo' example
• Midterm exercise: square.s showing one possible way of answering Question V on our Midterm Exam I
• Demo program: run.s for demonstrating use of the Linux 'fork()', 'waitpid()', and 'execve()' system-calls
• Demo program: exitcode.cpp this program allows a user to determine this program's 'exit-code' value
• Syntax demo: address.s showing the various ways you can specify the location for a memory-operand
• Demo program: mywhoami.s shows the use of some string-instructions (cmpsb, scasb, movsb, stosb)
• Demo programs: udpserver.cpp and udpclient.cpp for simple network programming using sockets API
• Demo program: asclient.s reimplements in assembly language the socket-calls used in 'udpclient.cpp'
• Demo program: pingpipe.cpp illustrates use of the 'pipe()' system-call for child-to-parent communication
• Demo program: seehosts.s showing how programs can open, read, and display a textfile of known size
• Some test-data: easter.txt for project #3
• Demo program: asclientx.s adds display to 'asclient.s' of its 'sock_addr' data-structure as debugging aid
• Demo program: eflags.s shows the initial contents of the x86 EFLAGS register as a 32-bit binary integer
• Demo program: cmosdump.s shows current values from the Real-Time Clock's 128 CMOS storage cells
  
  
• Midterm exercise: myargcat.s showing one possible way of answering Question V on Midterm Exam II
  
  
• Demo function: gcd.s our implementation using assembly language of the ancient Euclidean Algorithm
• Demo programs: gcdcalc.c and gcdcalc.cpp examples which illustrate "mixed-language" programming
• Demo program: sqroots.cpp displays a table of square-roots for all positive integers up to one hundred
• Demo program: multable.cpp this example of mixed-language programming prints a multiplication table
• Demo function: product.s this function multiplies a pair of signed integers by repeatedly doing additions
• Demo function: fact.s shows a 'recursive' function that has been written using assembly language
• Demo program: tryrecur.cpp showing how a C++ program could call the external function in 'fact.s'
  
  
• Demo program: triangle.cpp this is the C++ program that you will need to modify for your Project #5
  
  
• Demo routine: softmulb.s provides an emulation in software of the CPU's 'mul %bl' instruction
• Demo program: multest.cpp performs exhaustive testing of our 8-bit software-multiply routine
• Demo routine: softdivb.s provides an emulation in software of the CPU's 'div %bl' instruction
• Demo program: divtest.cpp performs exhaustive testing of our 8-bit software-divide routine
  
  
• Demo program: hyperfib.cpp showing the output from some calls to a three-level recursive function
• Final Exam exercise: hyperfib.s shows one way of answering Question V on our Final Examination

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Announcements

• Enrolled students may join the class mailing-list here
• Website for textbook author Kip Irvine is here
• No class meeting: Monday, February 18 (President's Day)
• project1: Due Noon Friday, 22 February 2008
• Midterm Exam 1: Monday, February 25
• project2: Due Noon Thursday, 27 March 2008
• No class meetings: March 17-21 (Spring vacation)
• Midterm Exam 2: Monday, April 7
• project3: Due Noon Thursday, 10 April 2008
• project4: Due Noon Thursday, 24 April 2008
• project5: Due Noon Thursday, 01 May 2008
• FINAL EXAMINATION: Noon, Wednesday, 14 May 2008