Due Thursday, Oct 6, 2016 @ 11:59pm
Updates (Check here if there are updates in the future, announced on Piazza first)
To apply updates, please enter the following:
git fetch proj2-starter
git merge proj2-starter/proj2-1 -m "merge proj2 update"
Important! Partner Policy
For this project, we are experimenting with project partners for this project, to alleviate the stress that some of the students were experiencing during Project 1, and also to encourage collaborative learning. You will have up to 1 partner. You and your partner should ideally be in the same lab. However, if you have strong desire to partner with someone from another lab section, talk to the TA to see if he/she is okay with this. The reason why we ask this is scalability issues with number of people in each lab, for the oral assessment that we will mention shortly below.
As partners, you will work in a shared BitBucket repo, and the detailed steps to set that up is in Step 0: Obtaining Files.
It is not mandatory to team up with a partner. If you feel like you benefit more educationally by working on the project yourself, feel free to do so.
To ensure that collaborative learning is indeed faciliated, we will conduct a series of oral project checkoffs during lab sections, following the complete project due date(Oct 13). This means that we will construct of list of questions about the details of this project, and you are expected to know the answers for them if you have indeed worked your way through the projects. Do not worry about getting some of the questions wrong - after all, this is a relatively challenging project and we will not double-penalize you if you happen to not be able to get every part of the project right. We will be concerned only if you cannot come up with answers for the parts of the project that for which your submission indicated you have had a thorough understanding. If we are alerted by potential abuse of our partner policy, then we will undertake further investigation and determine the appropriate penalty. This assessment will be a modest part of your individual project grade. As usual, your shared project grade will depend on your success in passing the autograder.
Therefore, as partners, although you are permitted to delegate different parts of the projects to each other, you should not miss out on the learning experiences from the parts that you did not get to work on. Partners should explain thoroughly to each other the design decisions and implementation details.
About
In this part of the project, we will be writing an assembler that translates a subset of the MIPS instruction set to machine code. Our assembler is a two-pass assembler similar to the one described in lecture. However, we will only assemble the .text segment. At a high level, the functionality of our assembler can be divided as follows:
Pass 1: Reads the input (.s) file. Comments are stripped, pseudoinstructions are expanded, and the address of each label is recorded into the symbol table. Input validation of the labels and pseudoinstructions is performed here. The output is written to an intermediate (.int) file .
Pass 2: Reads the intermediate file and translates each instruction to machine code. Instruction syntax and arguments are validated at this step. The relocation table is generated, and the instructions, symbol table, and relocation table are written to an object (.out) file.
The Instruction Set
Please consult the MIPS Green Sheet for register numbers, instruction opcodes, and bitwise formats. Our asembler will support the following registers: $zero, $at, $v0, $a0 - $a3, $t0 - $t3, $s0 - $s3, $sp, and $ra. The name $0 can be used in lieu of $zero. Other register numbers (eg. $1, $2, etc.) are not supported.
We will have 22 instructions and 5 pseudoinstructions to assemble, four that are not real pseudoinstructions. The instructions are:
| Instruction | Format |
| Add Unsigned | addu $rd, $rs, $rt |
| Or | or $rd, $rs, $rt |
| Set Less Than | slt $rd, $rs, $rt |
| Set Less Than Unsigned | sltu $rd, $rs, $rt |
| Jump Register | jr $rs |
| Shift Left Logical | sll $rd, $rt, shamt |
| Add Immediate Unsigned | addiu $rt, $rs, immediate |
| Or Immediate | ori $rt, $rs, immediate |
| Load Upper Immediate | lui $rt, immediate |
| Load Byte | lb $rt, offset($rs) |
| Load Byte Unsigned | lbu $rt, offset($rs) |
| Load Word | lw $rt, offset($rs) |
| Store Byte | sb $rt, offset($rs) |
| Store Word | sw $rt, offset($rs) |
| Branch on Equal | beq $rs, $rt, label |
| Branch on Not Equal | bne $rs, $rt, label |
| Jump | j label |
| Jump and Link | jal label |
| Mult | mult $rs, $rt |
| Div | div $rs, $rt |
| Move from $hi | mfhi $rd |
| Move from $lo | mflo $rd |
The pseudoinstructions are:
| Pseudoinstruction | Format |
| Load Immediate | li $rt, immediate |
| Load word, with a 32-bit offset | lwb $rt, big($rs) |
| Save word, with a 32-bit offset | swb $rt, big($rs) |
| Store 3 registers on stack | sos $rd, $rs, $rt |
| Restore 3 registers from stack | rsf $rd, $rs, $rt |
Implementation Steps
Please note that your project will be graded on the HIVE machines. While you are free to develop on other machines, you need to make sure that your code compiles and runs without errors on the hive machines before submitting. If you do not, you run the risk of turning in non-compiling code and getting a ZERO on the entire project.
Step 0: Obtaining the Files
If you are teaming up with a partner..
- First, you need to create a private repo with the following format proj2-xxx-yyy where xxx is your login and yyy is your partner's login in alphabetical order. There should only be a need for 1 repo for both group members. Please set this to PRIVATE. Just to make sure, set this to PRIVATE. If you do not set this to PRIVATE, horrible things will happen to you and you will be severely punished. So before continuing, make sure your repo is PRIVATE. Not setting your repo to private, even if by mistake will be seen as an intention to cheat.
- From your access management settings, give 'cs61c-staff' admin access to your repo. You also must do this from the very beginning to avoid any penalties placed upon your grade.
- Enter into your proj2-xxx-yyy repository in your class account Once in this directory, run the following:
git clone https://bitbucket.org/mybitbucketusername/proj2-xxx-yyy.git cd proj2-xxx-yyy git remote add proj2-starter https://github.com/61c-teach/fa16-proj2-starter.git git fetch proj2-starter git merge proj2-starter/proj2-1 -m "merge proj2 skeleton code"
If you are not teaming up with a partner..
- Use the proj2-XXX repositories for this project. PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOUR REPO IS PRIVATE!! If you do not set this to PRIVATE, horrible things will happen to you and you will be severely punished. So before continuing, make sure your repo is PRIVATE. Not setting your repo to private, even if by mistake will be seen as an intention to cheat.
- Check that you have 'cs61c-staff' as admin in your access management settings.
- Enter into your proj2-xxx repository in your class account
git clone https://bitbucket.org/mybitbucketusername/proj2-xxx.git cd proj2-xxx git remote add proj2-starter https://github.com/61c-teach/fa16-proj2-starter.git git fetch proj2-starter git merge proj2-starter/proj2-1 -m "merge proj2 skeleton code"
Once you complete these steps, you will have the proj2 directory inside of your repository, which contains the files you need to begin working.
As you develop your code, you should make commits in your git repo and push them as you see fit.
You can compile you code by typing make. At first, you will get a bunch of -Wunused-variable and -Wunused-function warnings. The warnings tell you that variables/functions were declared, but were not used in your code. Don't worry, as you complete the assigment the warnings will go away.
Step 1: Building Blocks
Finish the implementation of translate_reg() and translate_num() in src/translate_utils.c. translate_reg() is incomplete, so you need to fill in the rest of the register translations. You can find register numbers on the MIPS Green Sheet. Unfortunately, there are no built-in switch statements for strings in C, so an if-else ladder is the way to compare multiple strings.
For translate_num(), you should use the library function strtol() (see documentation here). translate_num() should translate a numerical string (either decimal or hexadecimal) into a signed number, and then check to make sure that the result is within the bounds specified. If the string is invalid or outside of the bounds, return -1.
Step 2: SymbolTable
Implement add_to_table() and free_table().
Use the given SymbolTable data structure to store symbol name-to-address mappings in src/tables.c. Multiple SymbolTables may be created at the same time, and each must resize to fit an arbitrary number of entries (so you should use dynamic memory allocation). A SymbolTable struct has been defined in src/tables.h, and you may use the existing implementation. NO CHANGE IS NEEDED IN src/table.h, or you will throw the autograder off. However, feel free to add in helper methods in src/table.c if you need them.
In add_to_table, you cannot simply store the character pointer that was given, as it could point to a temporary array. You must store a copy of that string instead. You should use the helper functions defined in src/tables.c whenever appropriate. The provided SymbolTable also comes with an INITIAL_SIZE and SCALING_FACTOR to appropriately create a table and also increase the size of the table when trying to add to a table currently at full capacity.
You must make sure to free all memory that you allocate. See the Valgrind section under testing for more information.
Step 3: Instruction Translation
Implement translate_inst() in src/translate.c. The MIPS Green Sheet will again be helpful and perhaps even necessary, and so will bitwise operations.
translate_inst() should translate instructions to hexadecimal. Note that the function is incomplete. You must first fix the funct fields, and then implement the rest of the function.You will find the translate_reg(), translate_num(), and write_inst_hex() functions, all defined in translate_utils.h helpful in this step. Some instructions may also require the symbol and/or relocation table, which are given to you by the symtbl and reltbl pointers. You are required to implement the write_*() functions declared in translate.h. This is a requirement for your benefit. To lower the intensity of the project, most of the code for this step has been provided, however it is not complete. The important issue is input validation -- you must make sure that all arguments given are valid. If an input is invalid, you should NOT write anything to output, and return -1 instead.
Use your knowledge about MIPS instruction formats and think carefully about how inputs could be invalid. You are encouraged to use MARS as a resource. Do note that MARS has more pseudoinstruction expansions than our assembler, which means that instructions with invalid arguments for our assembler could be treated as a pseduoinstruction by MARS. Therefore, you should check the text section after assembling to make sure that the instruction has not been expanded by MARS .
If a branch offset cannot fit inside the immediate field, you should treat it as an error.
Step 4: Pseudoinstruction Expansion
Implement write_pass_one() in src/translate.c, which should perform pseudoinstruction expansion on the load immediate (li), load word with a 32-bit offset (lwb), save word with 32-bit offset (swb), store 3 registers on stack (sos), and restore 3 registers from stack (rsf) instructions.
The li instruction normally gets expanded into an lui-ori pair. However, an optimization can be made when the immediate is small. If the immediate can fit inside the imm field of an addiu instruction, we will use an addiu instruction instead. Other assemblers may implement additional optimizations, but ours will not.
lwd and swd allow users to specify a 32-bit offset to the memory address instead of a 16-bit offset.
sos takes in three registers, and stores them on the stack in order of ascending memory addresses. For example: the instruction sos $t0 $t1 $t2, would store $t1 at a higher memory address than $t0, and $t2 at a higher memory address than $t1. The dummy register $0 will not be stored. If all three registers are $0, output addu $0 $0 $0.
rsf should work similarly.
Friendly reminder: when you are expanding pseudoinstructions to multiple instructions, make sure each line in the .out file only contains one instruction!
Step 5: Putting It All Together
Implement pass_one() and pass_two() in assembler.c. You may find the use of parse_args() very helpful in this task. Please keep in mind that if you use parse_args(), it MUST be called after the provided line "char* token = strtok(buf, IGNORE_CHARS);" in pass_one() because parse_args() heavily depends on strtok(). This has to do with the way strtok() works and how passing in NULL as an argument for strtok() is dependent on the last successful function call of strtok(). In the first pass, the assembler will strip comments, add labels to the symbol table, perform pseudoinstruction expansion, and write assembly code into an intermediate file. The second pass will read the intermediate file, translate the instructions into machine code using the symbol table, and write it to an output file. Afterwards, the symbol table and relocation table will be written to the output file as well, but that has been handled for you.
Before you begin, make sure you understand the documentation of fgets() and strtok(). It will be easier to implement pass_two() first. The comments in the function will give a more detailed outline of what to do, as well as what assumptions you may make. Your program should not exit if a line contains an error. Instead, keep track of whether any errors have occured, and if so, return -1 at the end. pass_one() should be structured similarly to pass_two(), except that you will also need to parse out comments and labels. You will find the skip_comment() and add_if_label() functions useful.
As an aside, our parser is much more lenient than an actual MIPS parser. Building a good parser is outside the scope of this course, but we encourage you to learn about finite state automata if you are interested.
Line Numbers and Byte Offsets
When parsing, you will need to keep track of two numbers, the line number of the input file and the byte offset of the current instruction. Line numbers start at 1, and include whitespace. The byte offset refers to how far away the current instruction is from the first instruction, and does NOT include whitespace. You can think of the byte offset as where each instruction will be if the instructions were loaded into memory starting at address 0. See below for an example.
The address of a label is the byte offset of the next instruction. In the example below, L1 has an address of 4 (since the next instruction is lw, whose address is 4) and L2 has an address of 8 (since the next instruction is ori, whose address is 8).
| Line # | Input File |
| 1 | addiu $t0 $a0 0 |
| 2 | L1: lw $t1 0($t0) |
| 3 | # This is a comment |
| 4 | L2: |
| 5 | ori $t1 $t1 0xABCD |
| 6 | addiu $t1 $t1 3 |
| 7 | |
| 8 | bne $t1 $a2 L2 |
| Output File | Byte Offset |
| addiu $t0 $a0 0 | 0 |
| lw $t1 0($t0) | 4 |
| ori $t1 $t1 0xABCD | 8 |
| addiu $t1 $t1 3 | 12 |
| bne $t1 $a2 label_2 | 16 |
Error Handling
If an input file contains an error, we only require that your program print the correct error messages. The contents of your .int and .out files do not matter.
There are two kinds of errors you can get: errors with instructions and errors with labels. Error checking of labels is done for you by add_if_label(). However, you will still need to record that an error has occurred so that pass_one() can return -1.
In pass_one(), errors with instructions can be raised by 1) write_pass_one() or 2) the instruction having too many arguments. In pass_two(), errors with instructions will only be raised by translate_inst(). Both write_pass_one() and translate_inst() should return a special value (0 and -1 respectively) in the event of an error. You will need to detect whether an instuction has too many arguments yourself in pass_one().
Whenever an error is encountered in either pass_one() or pass_two(), record that there is an error and move on. Do not exit the function prematurely. When the function exits, return -1.
For information about testing error message, please see the "Error Message Testing" section under "Running the Assembler".
Step 6: Testing (NO, DO NOT JUST SKIP THIS SECTION.)
You are responsible for testing your code. While we have provided a few test cases, they are by no means comprehensive. In the previous semester's rendition of the project, it was heavily reflected in student grades who and who did not test their code. Fortunately, you have a variety of testing tools at your service.
CUnit
Note: CUnit tests must be compiled on either the hive or the Soda 2nd floor machines, or you will get compilation errors. We have set up some unit tests in test_assembler.c. You can run them by typing:
make test-assembler
You are encouraged to write more tests than the ones that we have given.
Unit testing in C
In order to make automated testing easier for you, we've hooked up a framework called CUnit to the code. You can learn more about CUnit here.
All of your unit tests will live in test_assembler.c. We've provided two example test suites, each containing two tests, along with test suite initialization functions to make your life easier.
What is a "suite"?
A test suite is essentially a collection of tests. To add test suites, you can use the following boilerplate code in test_assembler.c. Two examples of this are already provided.
Creating the Test Suite
You'll need to add the following code in main() once per test suite:
[... inside of main() in test_assembler.c ...]
[ Replace pSuiteN below with a suitable name, like pSuite5 ]
CU_pSuite pSuiteN = NULL; // replace N with the test number
/* add a suite to the registry */
/* You don't necessarily have to use the same init and clean functions for
* each suite. You can specify the function names in the next line:
*/
pSuiteN = CU_add_suite("Suite_N", NULL, NULL);
if (NULL == pSuiteN) {
CU_cleanup_registry();
return CU_get_error();
} This is the doucmentation for add_suite: CU_pSuite CU_add_suite(const char* strName, CU_InitializeFunc pInit, CU_CleanupFunc pClean)
pUnit and pClean are optional. In the 2nd suite that we provided, pUnit is set to init_log_file because you are able to save to a log file (see init_log_file() for details).
Adding Tests to the Suite
You'll need to add the lines below for each test function that you want to add to the suite. In the example below, we are adding the function simple_sample_test to the suite.
[... also inside of main() in test-assembler.c ...]
/* Add test named simple_sample_test to Suite #N */
if (NULL == CU_add_test(pSuiteN, "Simple Test #N", simple_sample_test))
{
CU_cleanup_registry();
return CU_get_error();
}
How Tests Are Run
CUnit performs the following actions when running a test suite:
- Runs the suite initialization function. In the above code, this function is called init_suite.
- Runs all of the tests you added to the suite. In the above example, this runs only the function named simple_sample_test.
- Runs the suite cleanup function. In the above code, this function is called clean_suite.
Valgrind
You should use Valgrind to check whether your code has any memory leaks. We have included a file, run-valgrind, which will run Valgrind on any executable of your choosing. If you get a permission denied error, try changing adding the execute permission to the file:
chmod u+x run-valgrind
Then you can run by typing:
./run-valgrind <whatever program you want to run>
For example, you wanted to see whether running ./assembler -p1 input/simple.s out/simple.int would cause any memory leaks, you should run ./run-valgrind ./assembler -p1 input/simple.s out/simple.int.
MARS
Since you're writing an assembler, why not refer to an existing assembler? MARS is a powerful reference for you to use, and you are encouraged to write your own MIPS files and assemble them using MARS.
Warning: in some cases the output of MARS will differ from the specifications of this project. You should always follow the specs. This is because MARS 1) supports more pseudoinstructions, 2) has slightly different pseudoinstruction expansion rules, and 3) acts as an assembler and linker. For example, MARS may expand an addiu with a 32-bit immediate into li followed by an addiu instruction. Not only will the machine code be different, but the addresses of any labels will also be different. Therefore, you should always examine the assembled instructions carefully when testing with MARS.
MARS also supports an assemble-only mode via the command-line (see documentation here). To save assembled output to a text file, run:
mars a dump .text HexText <output location> <input MIPS file>
Diff (this should be your best friend for this project)
diff is a utility for comparing the contents of files. Running the following command will print out the differences between file1 and file2:
diff <file1> <file2>
To see how to interpret diff results, click here. We have provided some sample input-output pairs (again, these are not comprehensive tests) located in the input and out/ref directories respectively. For example, to check the output of running simple.s on your assembler against the expected output, run:
./assembler input/simple.s out/simple.int out/simple.out diff out/simple.out out/ref/simple_ref.out
Running the Assembler
First, make sure your assembler executable is up to date by running make.
By default, the assembler runs two passes. The first pass reads an input file and translates it into an intermediate file. The second pass reads the intermediate file and translates it into an output file. To run both passes, type:
./assembler <input file> <intermediate file> <output file>
Alternatively, you can run only a single pass, which may be helpful while debugging. To run only the first pass, use the -p1 flag:
./assembler <-p1> <input file> <intermediate file>
To run only the second pass, use the -p2 flag. Note that when running pass two only, your symbol and relocation table will be empty since labels were stripped in pass_one(), so it may affect your branch instructions.
./assembler <-p2> <intermediate file> <output file>
When testing cases that should produce error messages, you may want to use the -log flag to log error messages to a text file. The -log flag should be followed with the location of the output file (WARNING: old contents will be overwritten!), and it can be used with any of the three modes above.
Error Message Testing
We have provided two tests for error messages, one for errors that should be raised during pass_one(), and one for errors that should be raised during pass_two(). To test for pass_one() errors, assemble input/p1_errors.s with the -p1 flag and verify that your output matches the expected output:
./assembler -p1 input/p1_errors.s out/p1_errors.int -log log/p1_errors.txt diff log/p1_errors.txt log/ref/p1_errors_ref.txt
To test for pass_two() errors, assemble input/p2_errors.s running both passes:
./assembler input/p2_errors.s out/p2_errors.int out/p2_errors.out -log log/p2_errors.txt diff log/p2_errors.txt log/ref/p2_errors_ref.txt
Your intermediate and output files (.int and .out files) do NOT need to match the reference output if the input file contains an error.
Submission
Did you test thoroughly on the hive machines? If you do not, you risk getting a ZERO on the entire project.
There are two steps required to submit proj2-1. Failure to perform both steps will result in loss of credit:
-
First, you must submit using the standard unix submit program on the instructional servers. This assumes that you followed the earlier instructions and did all of your work inside of your git repository. To submit, follow these instructions after logging into your cs61c-XXX class account:
cd ~/proj2-XXX # or ~/proj2-XXX-YYY, or where your shared git repo is submit proj2-1
Once you type submit proj2-1, follow the prompts generated by the submission system. It will tell you when your submission has been successful and you can confirm this by looking at the output of glookup -t.
-
Additionally, you must submit proj2-1 to your shared BitBucket repository:
cd ~/proj2-XXX # or ~/proj2-XXX-YYY, or where your shared git repo is git add -u git commit -m "project 2-1 submission" git tag "proj2-1-sub" # The tag MUST be "proj2-1-sub". Failure to do so will result in loss of credit. git push origin proj2-1-sub # This tells git to push the commit tagged proj2-1-sub
Resubmitting
If you need to re-submit, you can follow the same set of steps that you would if you were submitting for the first time, but you will need to use the -f flag to tag and push to BitBucket:
# Do everything as above until you get to tagging git tag -f "proj2-1-sub" git push -f origin proj2-1-sub
Note that in general, force pushes should be used with caution. They will overwrite your remote repository with information from your local copy. As long as you have not damaged your local copy in any way, this will be fine.