Winter 2015 SPO600 Platform Specific Code Presentation

This is a draft only!
It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on this information.

Assignment

1. Select one of the topics below by placing your name in the "Student" column (first come, first served - one student per topic).
2. During week 5, research the topic and prepare a 3- to 5-minute presentation to teach the class.
3. Be prepared to teach this presentation during week 6. You may want to draw whiteboard diagrams, use presentation slides, or have a 1-page handout. Please avoid taking more than 5 minutes in total for your presentation.

Deadlines

• Topic selection: 9:50 am, Tuesday, February 10 (End of the scheduled Tuesday class in Week 5)
• Presentation ready: 8:00 am, Tuesday, February 17 (You must be prepared to present before the scheduled Tuesday class in Week 6)

FAQ

• Q: How much detail should the presentation include?
  • A: Each of these topics is pretty small and straightforward. Where appropriate, provide some type of resource for future reference -- a link to an existing web resource, a 1-page handout, or a blog post or wiki page about the topic. Your presentation should include:
    1. The Issue: A description of the type of platform-specific code that falls into this category - What it is and why programmers write code in this way. Include a short example of actual code.
    2. The Problem: When code written in this particular way has problems (e.g., when moved to a platform that has...) and what issues appear (program crashes, wrong results, won't compile, ...). Include bug reports or other evidence of this problem actually surfacing.
    3. The Solution: How code can be written in a portable way, avoiding platform-specific issues. Include a short example of actual code that solves the problem in a platform-neutral way.

• Q: How will this be marked?
  • A: In week 6, I will ask you to write a short blog post summarizing your presentation.

• Q: What about the topics not selected by a student?
  • A: Feel free to grab a second topic if you're interested. I'll teach the unclaimed topics.

• Q: Can we work with others preparing our topic?
  • A: Yes. In many cases, one topic is complimentary to another topic, and it would be great if you coordinated on your presentations.

• Q: What resources should I use?
  • A: There are resources on this wiki and on the web (for example, see the Assembly Language category on this wiki).

• Q: Are there any classes scheduled during Week 5?
  • A: No. Your professor will be at Linaro Connect. However, the classroom is reserved for our use, and you're welcome to use it to discuss your presentation ideas with classmates.

Topics

Category	Topic	Presenter Name	Links to resources (Wiki page, handout, web resources)	Link to blog post on this topic
Access to features not available in some versions of C / C++	Atomic operations	Thana Annis
Access to features not available in some versions of C / C++	Memory barriers
Access to features not available in some versions of C / C++	Low-level device access
Access to features not available in some versions of C / C++	Interrupt handling	Jan Ona
Access to features not available in some versions of C / C++	Cryptographic instructions	Gary Chau
Access to features not available in some versions of C / C++	Single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instructions
Access to features not available in some versions of C / C++	Run-time CPU feature identification (cpuid)
Access to features not available in some versions of C / C++	High-resolution counter access
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	Default size of variable types	Artem Luzyanin
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	Equivalence between variable types (e.g., int and long)
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	Layout of arrays in memory
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	Alignment requirements
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	Endianness (order of data stored in memory)
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	Direction of stack growth
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	Target triplet
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	Jiffies per second
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	Page size
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	Pointer size vs. integer size	Liam Martin
Assumptions about the system which can vary between architectures	FPU rounding