CSE 141L
Frequently Asked Questions For Lab 2

Fall 2003

1. Can we make changes to our ISA from Lab 1?

You may modify your ISA until the end of Lab 2, where you will test it. Based on your ISS feedback, you may tune your ISA if you wish. You will not be allowed to change your ISA for later labs, so test well.

2. I am programming my Assembler and ISS in X programming language. Who should I ask for language questions?

The TA and Readers should be able to answer most general programming questions. If you have specific questions related to the language you are using, you should address the following people:

Kyle: C/C++, Java, Perl
Dianne: Java
Nam: Java

3. Where can I find information about Makefiles?

The following resources are available online:

GNU Make Manual: http://www.gnu.org/manual/make/index.html
SunOS Solaris 8 Make Manual: http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/816-3318/6m9jv8amd?q=make&a=view

The ieng9 server has the SunOS 5.3 version of make installed, however, the GNU manual also explains the make process in general.

4. Does my assembly code need to follow the exact format given in Lab 1?

Your assembly code should not contain any machine code in it before your Assembler processes it. You may optionally omit the PC field from your assembly code for the Assembler to also fill in.

5. Is extra credit being offered on this project?

Yes, extra credit is being offered for groups that implement a high quality user-interactive mode in their ISS. Those groups choosing to implement a user-interactive mode should not make the interactive mode the default behavior. The -u option should be used on the command line to invoke user-interactivity.

E.g. iss -i mean.imi -d mean.dmi -o mean.out -u

6. What should we expect the format of the input data file to be?

The input data file will be structured to a single two digit hex number on a line, without a preceeding 0x. Check out the Lab 2 Sample Files to view the format.

7. Will there be any set format for grading the extra credit? Do we need to implement it like the GNU debugger or can we do whatever we want?

There is no real set format for the grading of the extra credit. You may do whatever you want. Be sure you document it well, though. If we can't figure out how it's supposed to work, then you're not going to get extra credit.

8. How should we turn in the instruction trace of our programs?

Your instruction traces should be included in your written report. There should be one instruction trace included for each program (mean, median, mode). To save on paper and reduce the size of reports, you should only include the first page of instruction traces for each program.

9. What should the format of our .out files be?

The .out files that are generated with the -o command line option for ISS should be of the following format:
The dynamic instruction count (in decimal) should be on the first line, followed by the contents of DMem with each value (in hex) on a line by itself.

Example:
dynamic_count (base 10)
value_of_dmem[0] (base 16)
value_of_dmem[1] (base 16)
value_of_dmem[2] (base 16)
value_of_dmem[3] (base 16)
...
value_of_dmem[255] (base 16)

You only need to dump the memory contents for what your ISA supports. This may be less than 255.

Last Modified: November 5, 2003