Winter 2014 SPO600 Weekly Schedule

It's Alive!
This weekly schedule will be updated as the course proceeds - dates and content are subject to change. The cells in this table will be linked to relevant resources and labs as the course progresses.

Week	Week of...	Tuesday - Class	Thursday - ALC/Lab	Deliverables
1	Jan 6	Introduction to Software Porting, Portability, Benchmarking, and Optimization	How is Code Accepted? - Analyze code submissions in two separate open source projects	Blog a commentary on code reviews in two communities
2	Jan 13	Assembly language, Machine code, and Architecture Distinctions	Hello World - Compile a basic C program and analyze the resultant binary	Set up a Fedora system and the ARMv8 Foundation Model
3	Jan 20	Writing in Assembler & Intro to Aarch64	Write Hello World in assembler - x86_64 and Aarch64	Given an x86_64 assembler program with a loop, write an Aarch64 version
4	Jan 27	Non-portable code & Git and other SCMS	Software Selection - Introduce the Class to your selected Software Projects	Blog about your selected software projects
5	Feb 3	Compiler Optimizations and Intrinsics	Compiler Optimization Lab - Observe GCC optimizations	Identify the machine-specific code in your selected projects
6	Feb 10	Porting - Adding platform-specific code for Aarch64	Group hack session - Porting	Port your projects
7	Feb 17	Portability - Removing platform-specific code	Group hack session - Portability	Remove platform-specific code from your projects
Study Week	Feb 24	Study Week
8	Mar 3	Project Work	Project Work	Get code into review
9	Mar 10	Benchmarking (I) - Baseline, Control, and Repeatability	Group hack session - Baseline benchmarks	Produce baseline benchmarks for your software
10	Mar 17	Benchmarking (II) - Change Impact	Group hack session - Impact of your Changes	Publish change impact stats for your software
11	Mar 24	Optimizing Code	Group hack - Profiling and optimizing	Code review update
12	Mar 31	Project Work	Project Work	Code review update
13	Apr 7	Conclusion	Final Presentations	Code accepted upstream
Exam Week	Apr 14	Exam Week - No exam in this course!

Week 1

Tuesday (Jan 7)

• Introduction to the Problem
  • Most software is written in a high-level language which can be compiled into machine code for a specific architecture. However, there is a lot of existing code that contains some architecture-specific code fragments written in Assembly Language.
  • Reasons for writing code in Assembly Langauge include:
    • Performance
    • Atomic Operations
    • Direct access to hardware features, e.g., CPUID registers
  • Most of the historical reasons for including assembler are no longer valid. Modern compilers can out-perform most hand-optimized assembly code, atomic operations can be handled by libraries or compiler intrinsics, and most hardware access should be performed through the operating system or appropriate libraries.
  • A new architecture has appeared: Aarch64, which is part of ARMv8. This is the first new computer architecture to appear in several years.
  • There are over 1400 software packages/modules present in GNU Linux systems which contain architecture-specific assembly language code. Most of these packages cannot be built on Aarch64 systems without modification.
• In this course, you will:
  1. Select two software packages from a list compiled by Steve Macintyre of Linaro. Each of the packages on this list contains assembly language code which is platform-specific.
  2. Prepare a fix/patch for the software so that it will run on 64-bit ARM systems (aarch64). This may be done at either of two levels:
     1. Port - Add additional assembly language code for aarch64 (basic solution).
     2. Make Portable - Remove architecture-specific code, replacing it with compiler intrinsics or high-level code so that the software will successfully build on multiple platforms.
  3. Benchmark - Prove that your changes do not cause a performance regression on existing platforms, and that (ideally) it improves performance.
  4. Upstream your Code - Submitting your code to the upstream (originating) software project so that it can be incorporated into future versions of the software. This will involve going through a code review to ensure that your code is compatible with and acceptable to the upstream community.
• Optional: You can participate in the Linaro Code Porting/Optimization contest. For details, see the YouTube video of Jon "maddog" Hall and Steve Mcintyre at Linaro Connect USA 2013.
• Course details:
  • Course resources are linked from the CDOT wiki, starting at http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/SPO600 (Quick find: This page will usually be Google's top result for a search on "SPO600").
  • Coursework is submitted by blogging.
  • Quizzes will be short (1 page) and will be held without announcement at any time. Your lowest three quiz scores will not be counted, so do not worry if you miss one or two.
  • Course marks:
    • 60% - Project Deliverables
    • 20% - Communication (Blog and Wiki writing)
    • 20% - Labs and Quizzes
  • Friday classes will be held in an "Active Learning Classroom". You are encouraged to bring your own laptop to these classes.
  • For more course information, refer to the SPO600 Weekly Schedule (this page), the Course Outline, and SPO600 Course Policies.