Computer Architecture class and Mano Assembler

A Science & Engineering OnLine Laboratory Notebook

This is the laboratory notebook of Damon Bruccoleri. Here you will find engrossing, thoughtful and fun commentary/opinion. Leave a comment and let others know what you think about any post here, view my photo gallery, or sign my guestbook.

"...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought." - Albert Einstein

Latest Notebook Entries

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Computer Architecture class and Mano Assembler

This spring I taught a computer architecture class to the students at the Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. This was a great bunch of very smart students. One of the topics in the course was the Mano Machine (we were u

sing the Mano book!). This is a fictitious computer that has a simple architecture. The architecture is simple enough that the students can grasp a complete chip architecture in a few weeks time. There is quite a bit on the internet about this including an assembler and simulator someone wrote. I teach them how to design/write a two pass assembler. Guess what? One of my students actually wrote the code to implement a two pass assembler for the Mano machine. Shao wrote it in Java. He created a Google codeplex project here if you want to download and run or build upon it. Shao Chong got an A in my class. Not only because of this extra credit, but he really understood the material. Good work Shao.

damon at 5:52 PM | (3) Comments | Add a comment | Permalink

Commments

Shao said...

I found that in order to write strong Java codes, I need to learn some design patterns. The codes in my previous "assembler" is hard to read.:P

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 5:56 AM

Daniel said...

We had fun in your class, Professor. We will certainly have more, if you are back in the fall.

Monday, July 20, 2009 7:55 AM

damon said...

yea. I like working there too. And all you. Too many students, but you are all good and some of the few people that actually listen to me! If I don't go I will make sure they send someone better than me.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 3:25 PM