1. Vagrant Installation

Let’s start by assuming that you have no Vagrant installed, you can go to the official website of Vagrant and download its latest version. You may also need to download Virtual Box.

2. Build the Top-level Directory

Now, let’s create a top-level directory that we plan to use for this series,

$ cd ~
$ mkdir CS6200
$ cd CS6200
$ mkdir pr1
$ mkdir pr3
$ mkdir pr4

Download and save the Vagrantfile from this link.

$ curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/Sadamingh/4866874eb05cf1ae92de6d8ada756a26/raw/1258f3ba822d382c42096e65e33c40702a369c56/Vagrantfile > Vagrantfile

3. Set up the Virtual Machine

From the directory with a Vagrantfile , we can use,

$ vagrant…

1. Set Up the Virtual Machine

(1) VirtualBox Installation

In this section, we would like to set up the experiment environment by the virtual machine. To continue, let’s download and install the Oracle VM VirtualBox 6.1 (if there’s a new version, download the new one) from this link (for Mac OS). Then, this should be installed as the VirtualBox application.

In China, it can be quite slow when we do,

$ sudo apt-get update

How to deal with this?

Step 1. Open the sources.list file

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Step 2. Replace the content with the following sources

deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial main restricted #Added by software-properties
deb http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial main restricted
deb-src http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial main restricted multiverse universe #Added by software-properties
deb http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates main restricted
deb-src http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates main restricted multiverse universe #Added by software-properties
deb http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial universe
deb http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates universe
deb http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial multiverse
deb http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates multiverse
deb http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial-backports main restricted universe multiverse #Added by software-properties
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial partner
deb http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial-security main restricted
deb-src http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial-security main restricted multiverse universe #Added by software-properties
deb http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ xenial-security universe
deb http://mirrors.aliyun.com/ubuntu/ …

1. Introduction to Operating System

(1) The Definition of Operating System

In simplest terms, an operating system is a piece of software abstract and arbitrates the underlying hardware system. In this context, abstract means to simplify what the hardware actually looks like, and arbitrates means to manage and oversee the controlling of the hardware.

Note that the cache memory is not managed by the operating system. Instead, it is managed by the hardware.

(2) Three Functions of Operating System

• Direct operational resources: means to control the use of CPU, memory, peripheral devices and allocate resources to different applications
• Enforces working policies: means to have fair resource access, and impose certain limits to allocate the maximum amount of a certain resource that a particular application or process can use. For example, the limits like the number of opening files that can be opened per process or some thresholds that need to be passed in order for some memory management daemons to kick in. …

1. Performance Measurements

(1) The Definition of Latency and Throughput

Usually, we say performance, we mean the “processor speed”. But even then, there are really two aspects of performance that are not necessarily identical. One is called latency, the other is called throughput.

• Latency: How long does a thing take from when we start something until it’s done.
• Throughput: How many things can we do per second.

We will see why they are not identical.

(2) The Relationship Between Latency and Throughput

Some may think that the value of the throughput is actually 1 over latency, which is,

1. Basic Definitions

(1) The Definition of Architecture

The concept of architecture means to design a building that is well-suited for its purpose.

(2) The Definition of Computer Architecture

The concept of computer architecture means to design a computer that is well-suited for its purpose.

(3) Goals of Computer Architecture

• Improve performance: speed, battery lifetime, size, weight, energy, efficiency.
• Improve abilities: 3D Graphics, debugging support, security

(4) Computer Architecture And Technology Trends

If we design computer architecture with the current technology then it will turn out to be an obsolete computer. …

1. The basic C++ Program

// A basic C++ Program#include <iostream>
using namespace std;int main() {
    cout << "Hello World!";
}

• Line 1: the double slashes // are used to denote this line as a comment.
• Line 3: the # symbol means this line is a preprocessor directive. The preprocessors are the directives, which give instructions to the compiler to preprocess the information before the actual compilation starts. Preprocessor directives are not C++ statements, so they do not end in a semicolon ;. This command requests the standard IO header file iostream be included.
• Line 4: this line means that we are using the standard library, which means that std::cout is equivalent to cout . …

A reduced instruction set computer, or RISC, is a computer with a small, highly optimized set of instructions. Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages (MIPS) is a special kind of RISC architecture. The instruction set of the MIPS64 can be found here.

1. Basic Calculation

• Add with overflow the values in the register R2 and R3 and put the result in register R1,

ADD R1, R2, R3

Or,

ADD R1 = R2 + R3

• Subtract with overflow the values in registers R1 and R5 and put the result in register R4,

SUB R1, R4, R5

• Multiply the values in registers R8 and R9 and put the result in register…