F28HS: Hardware-Software Interface (2019/20)

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This page covers the 2019/20 instance of the course. Follow this link to get to the latest instance of the course.

This page collects material for my part of the course F28HS --- Hardware-Software Interface, dealing with systems programming on the Raspberry Pi 2. Check this page on C and Assembler programming, which will be covered by Mehran Sharghi. Also, check this course descriptor for general information about the course.

Unless announced otherwise, the teaching slots for this course are:

• Mon 11:15 LT3 Lecture Note: Room change
• Mon 16:15 JW2 Lecture
• Tue 12:15 JW2 Tutorial
• Thu 11:15 Linux Lab (EM 2.50) (surnames A-K)
• Fri 11:15 Linux Lab (EM 2.50) (surnames L-Z and GLA students)

Purpose and Learning Objectives

Aims:

• To gain an understanding of low-level, hardware-oriented and systems programming.
• To develop skills in resource-conscious programming.
• To develop programming skills in such languages.

Syllabus:

• Low-level, assembler programming
• Low-level, C programming
• Advanced computer architecture issues impacting software performance (caches, multi-cores, etc)
• Operating system interfaces for low-level software
• Operating system concepts such as device handling, interrupts, BIOS etc
• Embedded systems programming
• Resource-conscious programming techniques (memory, performance; programming techniques, tools, monitor ing)

Pre-requisites:

• Introduction to Computer Systems (F27CS)

Course Structure & Learning Material

Below are the complete slides for this course:

	Lecture Mon 4:15 (HWL)	Lect. Mon 11:15 (RJS)	Tutorial Tue 12:15	Sample Sources	Labsheets	Bg Reading
Week 1	Overview &	C Part 1	Python	Python samples	LabSheet	"Adventures in "
	Intro to Sys-level prging (4up)		prging (4up)			in Raspberry Pi (Ch. 8)"
Week 2	Intro to Sys-level prging (4up)	C Part 2	Tutorial C 1	Greg's page	Lab C 1	"The C book"
Week 3	Sys prging on the RPi2 (4up)	C Part 3	Tutorial LED (4up)	Srcs LED	Lab LED	BCM2835 Peripherals,
Week 4	Memory Hierarchy (4up)	C Part 3	Tutorial C 2	Greg's page	Lab C 2	Blocking in matrix mult.
Week 5	Memory Hierarchy (4up)	C Part 4	Tutorial Button (4up)	Srcs Button	Assessed Lab	wiringPi
Week 6	Exceptional Control Flow (4up)	C Part 5	Tutorial C 3	Greg's page	Lab C 3	Arch Ref & Tech Ref
Week 7	Prging external devices (4up)	Asm Part 1	Tut Perf Counters	Srcs PMU	Cache-friendly code	Extra lab sheet
Week 8	Interrupt Handling (4up)	Asm Part 2	Tut Asm 1	Greg's page	Lab Asm 1	RPi arch slides
Week 9	Tutorial Security (4up)	Asm Part 5	Tut Asm 2 Tut Asm 3		Lab Asm 2	Buffer Overflow Tutorial
Week 10	Processor Architecture (4up)	Asm Part 3	Tutorial Inline Asm (4up)	Srcs Inline Asm	Lab Inline Asm	GCC Inline Asm
Week 11	Processor Architecture (4up)	Asm Part 4	Tutorial LCD (4up)	Srcs LCD	Lab LCD	HD44780 Tech Doc
Week 12	Revision (4up)	C&Asm Rev	Live coding (Asm)	Greg's page		GPIO prging in Asm

• Complete Lecture Slides for Systems Programming (2019/20)
• Complete Tutorial Slides for Systems Programming (2019/20)

• Complete Lecture Slides for Systems Programming (2018/19) (4up version)
• Complete Tutorial Slides for Systems Programming (2017/18) (4up version)

All slides and sample sources are also available from this github repo on F28HS.

Captured lectures:

Captured lectures (these lectures are all available on the F28HS channel of Stream) and selected lectures and tutorials are linked below:

Lectures:

Note: these lectures are from 2018/19 and are also available for the F28HS channel for 2018/19 here.

Sys Prging	C & Assembler
Lecture 0: Overview
Lecture 1: Overview of Systems Programming (Part A) and Part B
Lecture 2 (Sys Prging): Sys prging on the RPi and Lecture 3A (Memory Hierarchy)
Lecture 3B (Sys Prging): Memory Hierarchy
Lecture 4 (Sys Prging): Lecture on Programming external decives using I2C bus
Lecture 5 (Sys Prging): Exceptional Control Flow
Lecture 6 (Sys Prging): Computer Architecture and Pipelining	Lecture 6: ARM Assembler 1
Lecture 6b (Sys Prging): Computer Architecture and Pipelining
Lecture 7: INterrupt handling	Lecture 7: ARM Assembler 2
Lecture 8 (Sys Prging): Interrupts and Interval Timers	Lecture 7/8: ARM Assembler 3
Lecture 8B (Sys Prg): (Hardware) Interrupts	Lecture 9: ARM Assembler 5
Lecture 10 (Sys Prging): Revision	Lecture 10 (C&Asm): C & Assembler Summary

Tutorials:

Sys Prging	C & Assembler
Tutorial 1 (Sys Prging): Rpi2 Usage
Tutorial 2 (Sys Prging): Programming an LED in C	Tutorial 2 of the C part
Tutorial 3 (Sys Prging): Programming a Button in C	Extra Tutorial on C (with a focus on pointers)
Tutorial 4 (Sys Prging): Inline Assembler	Tutorial Assembler 1
Tutorial 5 (SysPrg): Programming an LCD Display	Tutorial Assembler 2
Extra Tutorial on LCD display and inline Assembler
Tutorial 9 (Sys Prging): GPIO Programming in Assembler

Screencasts:

Revision Screencasts:

The following screencasts cover basic topics on system-level programming on the Raspberry Pi 2. They are mainly intended as revision material, complementing the lecture slots. As preparation material for this course, follow this link to a screencast on the on-line Linux Introduction. This material, in particular the part on shell scripting, is a pre-requisite for F28HS.

Sreencast of Revision (HWL) (.wmv) (recommended for Windows, as download) and
Sreencast of Revision (HWL) (.mpg) and
Sreencast of Revision (HWL) (.mkv) (recommended with Chrome, for streaming)
or use the embedded video below for on-line streaming (video/webm with VP8 codec; maximise when viewing):

Sreencast of Tutorial 1 (LED control) (HWL) (.wmv) (recommended for Windows, as download) and
Sreencast of Tutorial 1 (LED control) (HWL) (.avi) and
Sreencast of Tutorial 1 (LED control) (HWL) (.mkv) (recommended with Chrome, for streaming)
or use the embedded video below for on-line streaming (video/webm with VP8 codec; maximise when viewing):

Sreencast of a simple ARM Assembler programming exercise (strcpy) (.wmv) (recommended for Windows, as download) and
Sreencast of a simple ARM Assembler programming exercise (strcpy) (.avi) and
Sreencast of a simple ARM Assembler programming exercise (strcpy) (.mkv) (recommended with Chrome, for streaming)
or use the embedded video below for on-line streaming (video/webm with VP8 codec; maximise when viewing):

Weekly Screencasts:

Weekly Screencast: Extra Tutorial on LCD Display and Inline Assembler:

Weekly Screencast: Assembler 2:

Weekly Screencast:

Lecture capture for Systems Programming Lec 6: Computer Architecture and Pipelining:

Lecture capture for Systems Programming Lec 5: Exceptional Control Flow:

Lecture capture for Systems Programming Lec 4: Caching example and Programming external decives:

Past exam papers

The exam paper from the main exam 2015/16 is available here and mock exam questions (HWL) are here.

Sample Sources

C and Assembler sample sources are in a separate directory

Tutorials

Lab exercises and tutorials are linked from the section on slides.

Assessment

Assessment will be partly by coursework and by a final 2-hour exam. The weighting of these components is as follows:

• Assessed Coursework: 40% (2 pieces)
• Exam: 60%

Coursework

Students will undertake two pieces of coursework: one on C programming (20%) (individual CW), and one on systems programming (20%) (pair CW) in both C and Assembler on the Raspberry Pi 2. The 2 pieces of coursework will be handed out in approximately Weeks 4 and 8 and submissions should be due at the end of Weeks 8 and 12.

The first assessed coursework can be found here:

• CW1 spec (Steganograpy)

The second assessed coursework can be found here:

• CW2 spec (MasterMind)

Demos of CW2

Demos for the CW2 implementation will run in Weeks 12 and 13. A schedule of possible demo slots will be posted here closer to the submission deadline. Use this sign-up sheet to register your pair for a demo. I will run most of the demos on Fri 3.4 and Mon 6.4. (starting 11:00). For those who can't make any of these slots, I'll run a limited number of demo slots on Tue 7.4. (starting 1:00).

Reading List

None of the textbooks below are required reading for the course, but chapters in these textbooks provide more detailed background information that is covered in the relevant lectures of this course. There is a reading list, with direct links to the textbooks, on Blackwell's Reading Lists site.

Specific topics:

• C programming (The Standard Textbook): "The C Programming Language", Kernighan and Ritchie. Pearson. ISBN: 9780131103627. author page
  (standard textbook on C progamming, available from the library)
  
• C programming (online text-book): "The C book", by Mike Banahan, Declan Brady and Mark Doran
  (a completely on-line version of another C introduction)
• C programming (applied): "C: From Theory to Practice", by George S. Tselikis, Nikolaos D. Tselikas
  (focussing on applying C programming concepts to concrete examples, with useful exercises)
• Assembler programming (specifically for RPi): Bruce Smith, "Raspberry Pi Assembly Language: Raspbian", author page
  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 2 edition, 19 Aug 2013. ISBN-13: 978-1492135289.
  (practical assembler programming on the Raspberry Pi; good as an introduction tailored for this device)
• Assembler programming: Sivarama P. Dandamudi "Guide to Assembly Language Programming in Linux", SpringerLing page
  Springer, 2005. ISBN-13: 978-0-387-26171-3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/b136895
  (good introduction to the GNU/Linux toolchain for Assembler programming; some background on computer architecture; Note:: the Assembler language used is Intel IA-32 and not ARM, so you can't use the Assembler examples directly)
• Systems Programming: David A. Patterson, John L. Hennessy. "Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface",
  ARM edition, Morgan Kaufmann, April 2016. ISBN-13: 9780128017333.
  Available in the library
  (an established textbook on systems programming, in this version with examples in ARM assembly; make sure to pick up the correct edition)
• Systems Programming: Randal E. Bryant, David R. O'Hallaron "Computer Systems: A Programmers Perspective",
  3rd edition, Pearson, 7 Oct 2015. ISBN-13: 978-1292101767.
  Available in the library
  (a very good textbook on systems programming, from a programming rather than hardware design point of view; I'll be using the intro chapter and parts from the discussions on virtual memory and pipelining from this book; beware that the underlying architecture is x86-like and not ARM)
• Intro to Computer Architecture: Eben Upton et al
  Wiley, 2016. ISBN 978-1-119-18393-8
  "Learning Computer Architecture with Raspberry Pi"
  (this is a very accessible intro to computer architecture, that doesn't require any prior knowledge to the field; it is useful for an overview, and RPi specifics, but for in depth treatment of computer architecture, see the two textbooks above)
• Systems Programming on the RPi: Robert G. Plantz
  "Introduction to Computer Organization" -- ARM Assembly Language Using the Raspberry Pi
  online textbook
  (textbook on computer architectures, focussing on the RPi, with many assembler programming example; very relevant for this course!)

Other Resources

• "An Introduction to GCC" by Brian J. Gough, foreword by Richard M. Stallman
  Paperback (6"x9"), 144 pages. Revised August 2005.
  Retail Price: $19.95 (£12.95 in UK)
  ISBN: 0-9541617-9-3 (ISBN-13: 978-0-9541617-9-8)
  
• "What every programmer should know about memory", LWN article, by Ulrich Drepper, Sep 2007
• ""Raspberry PI Assembler" ", Roger Ferrer Ibdanez and William J. Pervin (on-line book; Dec'18)
• Linux Driver API: GPIO section
• "Beginning Linux Programming", N. Matthew, 4th Edition. ISBN-13: 978-8126515714

Copyright

Except where stated otherwise, all teaching material, including lecture notes, tutorials and lab exercises, are Copyright (C) Heriot-Watt University, and respective authors. Please respect our rights over this material and contact us if you want to use it in another context.