COMP226 Resources

Some (potentially) useful links.

Resources you'll need for pracs, tutes and/or lectures in comp226:

A link to the prac 2 page about how to use tkisem and as-isem and ld-isem.
On-line SPARC instruction reference pages developed by Kate.
The official SPARC reference card (the same as the one handed out in lectures).

Resources you might be interested in looking at for more details:

On-line information for Patterson and Hennessy.
If you want to work on your tkisem pracs and assignments on your own PC, and you have an internet connection, then you should consider installing X on your machine. That will allow you to run programs like tkisem on titanic over the Internet (and see their output on your screen). Very useful. The page linked there helps you with installing cygwin (a Unix like system that operates on top of Windows) and its packages that include X.
Of course, if you already run Unix (including OSX -- the Apple operating system), then you already have X, or have easy access to it if you're unlucky enough to not have it installed by default, so just read on.
Note that you do not need to take TkIsem home. If you already have X running on your home machine (Apple or Linux or already installed on your Windows machine), or you're happy to install X (say Cygwin/X for example, or X-Ming as in the labs) then, provided you are connected to the internet you can run TkIsem on Titanic and view the output via X Windows at home.
Tested today, August 4, 2013: If you wish to run tkisem over the Internet from your Mac or Linux machine simply
```
      ssh -X -Y -C youridnumber@titanic.ics.mq.edu.au
```
at a command prompt, and after logging into titanic type "tkisem &" (or, if perhaps your path isn't properly set then
```
      /home/student/comp226/Isem/tkisem &
```
should have the same effect (sometime soon you should make sure you know what a "path" is and why this works).
Tested today, August 10, 2011: If you wish to run tkisem over the Internet from a Windows PC simply
- Install cygwin as in the link above
- Include the packages xorg-server and xinit
- Open a cywin bash shell
- At the command prompt type "startxwin"
- (you may need to respond to a warning from your firewall to allow X traffic through)
- In the X-windows command window type
```
      ssh -X -Y -C youridnumber@titanic.ics.mq.edu.au
```
- After logging into titanic type "tkisem &" (or, if perhaps your path isn't properly set then
```
      /home/student/comp226/Isem/tkisem &
```
  should have the same effect (sometime soon you should make sure you know what a "path" is and why this works)).
Gordon Bell is famous for his predictions of the development of computing technology. There is a good article in Wikipedia on his Law of Computer Classes which describes the emergence of new types of computing devices. His predictions for this decade include TB personal storage (already achieved). Interesting reading, especially now that we're halfway through.

The following are dead links recovered using the Wayback Machine. Let me know if you find equivalent material somewhere current.

A list of SPARC traps. TkIsem may generate some of these traps if you have errors in your code.
tricks.html Some suggestions of how to make your program faster (but remember, the most significant improvements usually come from thinking carefully about the algorithms that you use. And applying these you should think about how many times the code you improve gets executed (the dynamic count).

An old exam and some old exam questions...

The draft 2009 comp226 exam.
The 2005 comp226 exam.
Part A of the 2004 comp226 exam.
Some questions (with some answers!) from the 2002 comp226 exam.

Please remember that there are more exams stored in the library (and they're usually complete (but without answers!)). The ones I've put here include incomplete drafts, sometimes with funny notations that didn't appear in the actual final exam, but I've put them here in case you want to see them anyway. You should also have access to the 2001 exam (electronically through the library) and to most of the exams prior to 1999 (in books in the library). I didn't teach comp226 in 2000, and apparently that exam was kept secret...

Also, the 2005 exam (at least) included a copy of the Reference Card (I don't expect you to remember details like which bits of the machine code need to be on to indicate that an instruction is a bne as opposed to a ble) but I haven't reproduced the reference card here as you probably already have a copy (or you can get another one above).

Other more recent exams should be available too. Here's a link to recent past exams held in the library.


Mike's Comp226 Page July 2013