CMU Computer Systems: Introduction

Course Theme

• Abstraction Is Good But Don’t Forget Reality

Reality #1

• Ints are not Integers, Floats are not Reals

Reality #2

• Gotta Know Assembly
• Understanding assembly is key to machine-level execution model

Reality #3

• Random Access Memory Is an Unphysical Abstraction
  • Memory is not unbounded
  • Memory referencing bus especially pernicious
  • Memory performance is not uniform

Reality #4

• There’s more to performance than asymptotic complexity
  • Constant factor matters too
  • And even exact op count does not predict performance
  • Must understand system to optimize performance

Reality #5

• Computers do more than execute programs
  • They need to get data in and out
  • They communicate with each other over networks