The textbook and its uses

The assigned readings listed below are meant to provide you reinforcement and a reference for the material discussed in lectures and used for projects. The textbook that we will use for this purpose is Bryant and O'Hallaron's, Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective (3^rd edition). You can find it new, used, and for rent on Amazon and the like.

The readings

• Through to the end: The remaining topics and things to read about them; not all of these are covered in the textbook.
  • More processes: Chapter 8, picking up at Section 8.2.2, through 8.2.5.
  • Files ad file systems: Chapter 10, through Section 10.4. Also, the File Allocation Table (FAT) page on Wikipedia, and the UNIX Fast File System page on Wikipedia.
  • Signals: Section 8.5, through 8.5.3.
  • Virtual machines: Again from Wikipedia, the pages on virtual machines as a broad category, plus the page that focuses on hypervisors.
• Nov-02: CPU interrupts, the kernel, and processes.
  • Chapter 8, from the beginning through Section 8.2.1.
• Oct-25: More virtual memory page swapping and related.
  • Sections 9.3 through 9.6.
• Oct-19: Some more virtual memory, which then lead us into the memory hierarchy and hardware caching.
  • Virtual memory -- more address translation: Section 9.3.2 and 9.6 (stopping at 9.6.1).
  • Memory hierarchy and Hardware caches: Sections 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4. These include pieces we haven't covered, and reading those will deepen your understanding of these topics.
• Oct-05: These are the relevant parts, but they lack some things we discussions, and they contain some stuff we won't discuss (or haven't yet).
  • Virtual memory -- the abstraction: Chapter 9, through Section 9.2.
  • Virtual memory -- address translation: Section 9.6.
• Sep-28:
  • Heap management -- a bit more explicit allocators: Section 9.9, the rest.
  • Heap management -- garbage collectors: Section 9.10.
  • Pointers and programming errors: Section 9.11. (Not discussed much in class, but good material.)
• Sep-21: And from this week...
  • Heap management -- explicit allocators: Section 9, through 9.9.5.
• Sep-14: From this week...
  • Procedure calls and the stack: Sections 3.4.4, 3.7 (all).
• Sep-06: Here are the topics we covered, matched with sections of the textbook that address those topics:
  • Machine code, processors, and Hello World: Section 1.4
  • ISA's and beginning assembly: Sections 3.2, 3.4 (not including 3.4.3 yet), 3.5.1 and 3.5.2, 3.6 (not including 3.6.8).