Textbook

The textbook for the course is Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, Third Edition (also known as CS:APP3e) by Randal E. Bryant and David R. O’Hallaron. Pearson, 2015, ISBN 978-0134092669.

The textbook is long, but comprehensive, and past students have found it very useful as reference during the class. It is strongly recommended that you obtain a copy of this textbook. It may be purchased at the Harvard Coop, or from one of many online bookstores.

CS:APP3e textbook web page
Harvard Coop textbook list
CS:APP3e on Amazon
CS:APP3e on bookfinder (searches multiple online book sellers)

We do not recommend using the 2nd edition of CS:APP, because that edition is based on a different computer architecture (32-bit x86, not 64-bit x86-64). International editions of CS:APP3e are likely to be OK.

The rest of this page lists specific textbook sections relevant for the units of our class.

Unit 1: Data representation

General: §1.1–1.4
Integer representation: §2.1–2.2
Compound type representation (arrays, structures, unions): §3.8–3.9
Integer arithmetic: §2.3
Pointer arithmetic: none (§3.8.2 from a Unit 2 perspective)
Dynamic memory allocation: §9.9 (includes an implementation of a dynamic memory allocator)
Segments: §9.9.0 (briefly; §3.7 discusses stacks from a Unit 2 perspective)
Memory bugs: §9.11 (§3.10.3 from a Unit 2 perspective)
Undefined behavior: Not covered in the textbook (in fact the textbook contains misstatements about integer overflow)
- Wikipedia
- “A Guide to Undefined Behavior in C and C++” 1, 2, 3 by John Regehr, professor at Utah
- “What Every C Programmer Should Know About Undefined Behavior” 1, 2, 3 by Chris Lattner, Clang developer

Unit 2: Assembly & machine programming

General: §1.4, §3.0–3.2
Arithmetic and logical instructions: §3.5
Data movement instructions: §3.3–3.4
Control flow instructions: §3.6
Calling convention: §3.7
Compiler optimizations: §5–5.6, §5.14

Unit 3: Kernel

General: §1.7
Exceptions and protected control transfer: §8.1, §8.3
Process isolation, system calls, and kernel privilege: §8.2
Virtual memory in general: §9–9.1
Virtual memory for isolation: §9.5
Address spaces: §9.2
Page tables: §9.3.2, §9.6, §9.7
Semantics of fork: §8.4.2
Implementation of fork: §9.8.2

Unit 4: Storage

General: §1.5–1.6
Memory hierarchy, storage technologies, locality: §6
- List of caches by latency: §6.3
Processor caches: §5.12
File I/O: §10.1–10.4
Standard I/O: §10.10
Implementation of an alternate I/O package: §10.5
Virtual memory for caching (buffer cache): §9.3

Unit 5: Process control

General: §1.7
Creating and destroying processes: §8.4
- Simple shell with fork and execve: §8.4.6
Sharing files and I/O redirection: §10.8–10.9
Concurrent programming with processes: §12.1–12.2
Signals: §8.5
- Process groups: §8.5.2

Unit 6: Synchronization

The textbook material on synchronization is worth scanning, but it is not as strong as the other units.