CS 429H

Latest Announcements

1/14: Welcome to CS 429H
1/23: Office hours switched to Noon on Fridays for the whole semester.

Course Objectives

To understand the basic operation of computing hardware, how it works, and how it interfaces to software Upon completing this course, students should have a high-level understanding of the role played by compilers, assemblers, instruction sets, and hardware. Students will also learn system-level programming and apply their knowledge of computer architectures to programming for performance.

A significant component of this course is the laboratory, which will have required meetings for two hours each week, outside of lecture. Students will be expected to prepare in advance of the laboratory, perform in-lab exercises, and complete laboratory assignments on their own.

Lecture time: T/Th 12:00 - 14:00
Location: GDC 5.302

Lab time: F 09:00-11:00/13:00-15:00
Location: GDC 2.410/ENS 109

Teaching Assistants

Instructor

Course Materials

Grading

Your final grade for the course will be based on the following approximate weights:

The course will include two in-class exams and a third exam on the last day of class, but held at 5pm. The third exam lasts 3 hours, and mostly focuses on the material from the last third of the course, but will include some questions from throughout the course.

Course Policies

Collaboration

Students are encouraged to talk to each other, to the course staff, or to anyone else about any of the assignments. Assistance must be limited to discussion of the problem and sketching general approaches to a solution. Each student must write out his or her own solutions to the homework. You should identify all collaborators in writing in your homework.

The department student code of conduct is here. Here is a nice quotation, "The University and the Department are committed to preserving the reputation of your degree. It means a lot to you. In order to guarantee that every degree means what it says it means, we must enforce a strict policy that guarantees that the work that you turn in is your own and that the grades you receive measure your personal achievements in your classes."

Students may not acquire from any source (e.g., another student or an internet site) a partial or complete solution to a problem or project that has been assigned. You cannot simply search for homework/lab answers and turn that work in as your own. If you do so, you will be caught and you will get an F on the assignment and possibly in the course. I take academic honesty very seriously.

Exams

All exams are open book, open note, and open calculator.
Laptops, tablets, and ereaders are BANNED from exams. The problem with these devices is that computers are the most flexible and capable communication devices yet devised by people. Exams are about many things, but they are very much not about external communication.
Combining these two policies, calculators must not have any communication feature at all. Any student using a calculator that can communicate (even if such communication is not enabled) will earn an automatic zero on the exam.

Late Policy

All labs must be submitted by 11:59pm on the day the schedule says they are due. All labs will be submited via turnin, with specific instructions in the lab writeup.
All assignments must be submitted by 11:59pm on the day the schedule says they are due. All assignments will be submited via turnin, with specific instructions in the assignment writeup.
You have four (4) slip days for you to use at your discretion throughout the semester. Handing in a lab any time within 24 hours of its being due costs one slip day. There is no grade penalty for using a slip day. Once your slip days are used up, it is up to the discretion of the TA and instructor as to whether a late assignment is even graded.
In general, for every day late, an assignment (lab or homework) is marked off 20%. So a completely correct assignment received one day late will get 80 of 100 points. If you use a slip day, the assignment is not considered late. Slip days are for use at your discretion, so if you hand in an assignment two days late, you can take one slip day and one late day. Finally, I will give some credit if you hand in an assignment no matter how late, so please hand it in. If it is more than 5 days late, you will only get nominal credit, but that beats nothing in my eyes (and should in yours also).
If you become ill: Contact the instructor and get a medical note. A medical note is required to miss an exam.

Credit

The course materials are mostly derived from Bryant and O'Hallaron, Computer Systems A programmer's perspective. Additional material comes from Professors Stephen Keckler, Mike Dahlin, Donald Fussell and Warren A. Hunt Jr.

Last updated: 2015-02-03 00:55:44 -0600 [validate xhtml]