CMPSC 311- Introduction to

Systems Programming
Module: Systems Programming

Professor Patrick McDaniel

Fall 2015

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming

 WARNING
•  Warning: for those not in the class, there is an
unusually large number of people trying to get in (4x
more than any other year). I cannot make any
promises that everyone will get into the class due to
others dropping.

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page

 Software Systems
•  A platform, application, or other structure that:
‣  is composed of multiple modules …
•  the system’s architecture defines the interfaces of and
relationships between the modules
‣  usually is complex …
•  in terms of its implementation, performance, management
‣  hopefully meets some requirements …
•  Performance
These are properties of computer

•  Security systems that people design, optimize,
and test for. Some refer to the as

•  Fault tolerance
"ilities” (pronounced "ill-it-tees")
•  Data consistency

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100,000 Foot View of Systems

Java
C application C++ application
application

C standard library C++ STL / boost /

JRE
(glibc) standard library
OS / app interface
(system calls)
operating system
HW/SW interface
(x86 + devices)
hardware
CPU memory storage network
GPU clock audio radio peripherals

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 A layered view

provides
service to client client client
layers above
your system
understands
layer below
and relies on
layers below layer below
•••

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 A layered view

more useful,
portable, reliable client client client
abstractions

your system
constrained
by performance, layer below
footprint, behavior
of the layers below layer below
•••

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 Example system
•  Operating system
‣  a software layer that abstracts away the
messy details of hardware into a useful,
portable, powerful interface
‣  modules:
•  file system, virtual memory system,
network stack, protection system,
scheduling subsystem, ...
•  each of these is a major system of its own!
‣  design and implementation has many
engineering tradeoffs
•  e.g., speed vs. (portability, maintainability,
simplicity)
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 Another example system
•  Web server framework
‣  a software layer that abstracts away the messy details of
OSs, HTTP protocols, database and storage systems to
simplify building powerful, scalable Web services
‣  modules:
•  HTTP server, HTML template system, database storage,
user authentication system, ...
‣  also has many, many tradeoffs
•  programmer convenience vs. performance
•  simplicity vs. extensibility

Note: we will focus on the OS system this semester.

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 Systems and Layers
•  Layers are collections of system
functions that support some
abstraction to service/app above
‣  Hides the specifics of the
implementation of the layer
‣  Hides the specifics of the layers below
‣  Abstraction may be provided by
software or hardware
‣  Examples from the OS layer
•  processes
•  files
•  virtual memory

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 A real world abstraction ...
•  What does this thing do?

What about this?

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 What makes a good abstraction?
•  An abstraction should match “cognitive model” of users
of the system, interface, or resources

“Cognitive science is concerned with understanding


the processes that the brain uses to accomplish

complex tasks including perceiving, learning,

remembering, thinking, predicting, inference,

problem solving, decision making, planning, and

moving around the environment.”
--Jerome Busemeyer

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page

 How humans think (vastly simplified)
•  Our brain’s receive sensor data
to perceive and categorize
environment (pattern matching
and classification)
‣  Things that are easy to assimilate
(learn) are close to things we
already know
‣  The simpler and more generic the
object, the easier (most of the
time) it is to classify
•  See human factors, physiology,
and psychology classes ..
CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page
 A good abstraction …
•  Why do computers have a desktop with files, folders,
trash bins, panels, switches …

•  … and why not streets with buildings, rooms, alleys,

dump-trucks, levers, …
CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page
 In class exercise …
•  In groups of three to four:
‣  Desktops are outlawed by the computer police
‣  You are to come up with alternate abstractions for:
•  Data objects (i.e., replacements for files and directories)
•  Be ready to explain in 30 seconds your “environment”,
what are the metaphors, and why they are appropriate
given user’s cognitive models ….

•  Bonus for being innovative and timely

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page
 Computer system abstractions
•  What are the basic abstractions that we use (and
don’t even think about) for modern computer
systems?

CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page

 Processes
•  Processes are independent programs running
concurrently within the operating systems
‣  The execution abstraction provides is that it has sole control
of the entire computer (a single stack and execution context)

Tip: if you want to see what processes are running on your UNIX system,
use the “ps” command, e.g., “ps -ax”.
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 Files
•  A file is an abstraction of a read only, write only, or
ready/write data object.
‣  A data file is a collection of data on some media
•  often on secondary storage (hard disk)
‣  Files can be much more: in UNIX nearly everything is a file
•  Devices like printers, USB buses, disks, etc.
•  System services like sources of randomness (RNG)
•  Terminal (user input/out devices)

Tip: /dev directory of UNIX contains real and virtual devices, e.g., “ls /dev”.
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 Virtual Memory
•  The virtual memory abstraction
provides control over an imaginary
address space
‣  Has a virtual address space which
is unique to the process
‣  The OS/hardware work together to map
the address on to ...
•  Physical memory addresses
•  Addresses on disk (swap space)
‣  Advantages
•  Avoids interference from other processes
•  swap allows more memory use than physically
available

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 Byte-Oriented Memory Organization

•••
•  Programs Refer to Virtual Addresses
‣  Conceptually very large array of bytes
‣  Actually implemented with hierarchy of different memory types
‣  System provides address space private to particular “process”
•  Program being executed
•  Program can clobber its own data, but not that of others

•  Compiler + Run-Time System Control Allocation

‣  Where different program objects should be stored
‣  All allocation within single virtual address space
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 Machine Words
•  Machine Has “Word Size”
‣  Nominal size of integer-valued data Including addresses
‣  Many traditional machines use 32 bits (4 bytes) words
•  Limits addresses to 4GB
•  Becoming too small for memory-intensive applications
‣  Recent systems use 64 bits (8 bytes) words
‣  Potential address space ≈ 1.8 X 1019 bytes
‣  x86-64 machines support 48-bit addresses: 256 Terabytes

•  Machines support multiple data formats

‣  Fractions or multiples of word size
‣  Always integral number of bytes

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 Word-Oriented Memory Organization

•  Addresses Specify Byte Locations 32-bit 64-bit

Bytes Addr.
Words Words
‣  Address of first byte in word
0000
‣  Addresses of successive words differ Addr
= 0001
by 4 (32-bit) or 8 (64-bit) ??
0000
Addr
0002
= 0003
??
0000 0004
Addr
= 0005
??
0004 0006
0007
0008
Addr
= 0009
??
0008 Addr
0010
= 0011
??
0008 0012
Addr
= 0013
??
0012 0014
0015

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 APIs
•  An Applications Programmer Interface is a set of
methods (functions) that is used to manipulate an
abstraction
‣  This is the “library” of calls to use the abstraction
‣  Some are easy (e.g., printf)
‣  Some are more complex (e.g., network sockets)
‣  Mastering systems programming is the art and science of
mastering the APIs including:
•  How they are used?
•  What are the performance characteristics?
•  What are the resource uses?
•  What are their limitations
CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page
 Example: Java Input/Output
•  Set of abstractions that allow
for different kinds of input and
output
‣  Streams …
‣  Tokenizers ….
‣  Readers …
‣  Writers …

•  Professional Java programmers

know when and how to uses
these to achieve their goals
CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming Page
 Systems programming
•  The programming skills, engineering
discipline, and knowledge you need to
build a system using these abstractions:
‣  programming: C (the abstraction for ISA)
‣  discipline: testing, debugging, performance
analysis
‣  knowledge: long list of interesting topics
•  concurrency, OS interfaces and semantics,
techniques for consistent data management,
algorithms, distributed systems, ...
•  most important: deep understanding of the
“layer below”

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 Programming languages
•  Assembly language / machine code
‣  (approximately) directly executed by hardware
‣  tied to a specific machine architecture, not portable
‣  no notion of structure, few programmer conveniences
‣  possible to write really, really fast code
•  Compilation of a programming language results in
executable code to be run by hardware.
‣  gcc (C compiler) produces target machine executable code
(ISA)
‣  javac (Java compiler) produces Java Virtual Machine
executable code

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 Programming languages
•  Structured but low-level languages (C, C++)
‣  hides some architectural details, is kind of portable, has a few
useful abstractions, like types, arrays, procedures, objects
‣  permits (forces?) programmer to handle low-level details like
memory management, locks, threads
‣  low-level enough to be fast and to give the programmer
control over resources
•  double-edged sword: low-level enough to be complex, error-
prone
•  shield: engineering discipline

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 Programming languages
•  High-level languages (Python, Ruby, JavaScript, ...)
‣  focus on productivity and usability over performance
‣  powerful abstractions shield you from low-level gritty details
(bounded arrays, garbage collection, rich libraries, ...)
‣  usually interpreted, translated, or compiled via an
intermediate representation
‣  slower (by 1.2x-10x), less control

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 Discipline
•  Cultivate good habits, encourage clean code
‣  coding style conventions
‣  unit testing, code coverage testing, regression testing
‣  documentation (code comments!, design docs)
‣  code reviews
•  Will take you a lifetime to learn
‣  but oh-so-important, especially for systems code
•  avoid write-once, read-never code

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 Knowledge
•  Tools
‣  gcc, gdb, g++, objdump, nm, gcov/lcov, valgrind, IDEs, race
detectors, model checkers, ...
•  Lower-level systems
‣  UNIX system call API, relational databases, map/reduce,
Django, ...
•  Systems foundations
‣  transactions, two-phase commit, consensus, handles,
virtualization, cache coherence, applied crypto, ...

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