Systems Programming
UB Catalog information for CSE 220
This information is advisory only. The authoritative course description and requirements for a given semester are defined by the course syllabus.
Overview
This course is a required course in the 2018 and later curriculum. It covers low-level systems programming in userspace at the userspace/kernel boundary. Students will learn about the C programming language, system calls, memory management, threads, and concurrency.
Offerings
Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024Current Offering: Spring 2020
| Lecture | MWF 13:00-13:50, Cooke 121 |
|---|---|
| Lab | A1-A9: MTRFS Check HUB, Bell 340 |
| Office Hours |
M 14:00-15:00, Davis 334 W 10:00-11:00, Davis 334 |
| TA Office Hours | (See Piazza) |
Syllabus
Lectures
| Lecture | Date |
| Introduction (pdf) | 2020-01-27 |
| Introduction to C (pdf) | 2020-01-29 |
| Variables, Strings, and Loops (pdf) | 2020-01-31 |
| Conditionals and Control Flow (pdf) | 2020-02-03 |
| Memory and Pointers (pdf) | 2020-02-05 |
| Memory and Pointers continued | 2020-02-07 |
| Programming Practices (pdf) | 2020-02-10 |
| Porgramming Practices continued | 2020-02-12 |
| A Tour of Computer Systems (pdf) | 2020-02-14 |
| Memory Allocation (pdf) | 2020-02-17 |
| Integers and Integer Representation (pdf) | 2020-02-19 |
| Integers and Integer Representation continued | 2020-02-21 |
| Alignment, Padding, and Packing (pdf) | 2020-02-24 |
| Alignment, Padding, and Packing continued | 2020-02-26 |
| Floating Point Numbers (pdf) | 2020-02-28 |
| Floating Point Numbers continued | 2020-03-02 |
| Bitwise Operations (pdf) | 2020-03-04 |
| Bitwise Operations continued | 2020-03-06 |
| Midterm Review (pdf) | 2020-03-09 |
| Midterm Examination | 2020-03-11 |
| Distance Learning Overview & Q&A | 2020-03-13 |
| Process Anatomy (pdf) | 2020-03-23 |
| Process Anatomy continued | 2020-03-25 |
| The Compiler and Toolchain (pdf) | 2020-03-27 |
| Compiler Optimization (pdf) | 2020-04-01 |
| Dynamic Memory Allocation (pdf) | 2020-04-03 |
| Virtual Memory (pdf) | 2020-04-06 |
| Virtual Memory continued | 2020-04-08 |
| Caching and Locality (pdf) | 2020-04-10 |
| Caching and Locality continued | 2020-04-13 |
| More on GDB | 2020-04-15 |
| Processes, Threads, and Concurrency (pdf) | 2020-04-17 |
| Processes, Threads, and Concurrency continued | 2020-04-20 |
| Races and Synchronization (pdf) | 2020-04-22 |
| Races and Synchronization continued | 2020-04-24 |
| Races and Synchronization continued | 2020-04-24 |
| POSIX Threads and Synchronization (pdf) | 2020-04-27 |
| POSIX Threads and Synchronization continued | 2020-04-29 |
| The Kernel and User Mode (pdf) | 2020-05-01 |
| Input and Output (pdf) | 2020-05-04 |
Labs
| Lab | Week |
| Lab 01: Introduction to Git (pdf) | 2020-01-27 |
| Lab 02: Introduction to Make (pdf) | 2020-02-03 |
| Lab 03: Testing | 2020-02-10 |
| Lab Exam 1 | 2020-02-17 |
| Introduction to GDB (pdf) | 2020-02-24 |
| Lab 05: Pointer Math | 2020-03-02 |
| Midterm Exam, NO LABS | 2020-03-09 |
| Lab 06: Untabify | 2020-03-23 |
| Lab 07: Bit strings | 2020-03-30 |
| Lab 08: Malloc Help | 2020-04-06 |
| Lab Exam 2 | 2020-04-13 |
| Lab 09: Memory Mapping | 2020-04-20 |
| Lab 10: Implementing Mutexes with Compare-and-Swap | 2020-04-27 |
Assignments
| Assignment | Due |
| Programming Assignment 0: Command-Line Calculator | 2020-02-07 23:59:00 |
| Programming Assignment 1: Conway’s Game of Life | 2020-02-21 23:59:00 |
| Programming Assignment 2: Priority Queue | 2020-03-06 23:59:00 |
| Programming Assignment 3: Instant Messenger | 2020-04-03 23:59:00 |
| Programming Assignment 4: Dynamic Allocator | 2020-04-24 23:59:00 |
| Programming Assignment 5: Synchronization | 2020-05-08 23:59:00 |
Prerequisites
Students are expected to have a solid grasp of simple data structures (such as lists and arrays) and some programming experience. (CSE 116 or equivalent experience.)
Text
There are two texts for this course:
Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition, by Randal Bryant and David O’Hallaron.
The C Programming Lanuage, Second Edition, by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie.
Both of these books are truly excellent, and I recommend that you consider buying a copy to keep for your career.
Policies
The ultimate authority for course policies is the course syllabus. However, my general academic integrity policy can be found here and my list of policies is here
Topics
The topics to be covered in this course include:
- The C programming language
- Compiler and linker invocation and their roles in program development
- Version control, build, and other systems
- Representation of in-memory data structures
- Memory management
- The kernel/userspace boundary and the system call interface
- Threads
- Synchronization primitives and concurrency
Advice
You can find advice for succeeding in CSE 220 here. This is likely to be one of the more difficult courses you take in your career at UB, both due to the content of the course and to the position it has in the curriculum. Work hard, ask questions, and get help when you need it.
Course Structure
The primary deliverables for this course are weekly labs and several larger projects. Labs will consist of short exercises intended to deepen student understanding of course material (and perhaps cover background material for course projects), and will be evaluated in-lab. Course projects will be C language implementations of concepts discussed in class. Projects and labs will make up at least 50% of the final course grade, with the remainder being quizzes and exams.
There is one midterm and one (cumulative) final for this course. These written exams cover theoretical and fundamental materials beyond the specific implementation details required for the programming assignments and labs. There are four practical lab exams, which require implementing similar solutions to those seen in programming assignments and previous labs.
There are no graded homeworks for this course. Written homework assignments may be given to help students understand the material, and any material covered in homeworks may appear on exams or quizzes, but such assignments will not be directly evaluated.
Programming Assignments
All projects for this course must be implemented in C and compile and run correctly on the course-provided virtual machine image. Students will be expected to use version control and appropriate build tools (such as make) to manage their projects.
Virtual Machine
Ethan Blanton
Assistant Professor of Teaching
Ethan Blanton is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Buffalo.