CS0330 | Brown University

CSCI 0330: Introduction to Computer Systems

CS33 is taught by Professor Tom Doeppner (twd). Lectures are held every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 2:00 to 2:50 PM at Salomon Center 001, and are also recorded on Panopto and will be uploaded after each lecture.

The course is intended primarily for computer science students and computer engineers, though it's open to anyone with adequate preparation interested in learning the topics covered in the course announcement. It fulfills a core requirement for the A.B. and Sc.B. tracks in computer science, and is required for the Computer Engineering concentration.

In order to take CS33, you should have taken CS16, CS18, CS19, or CS200 (or have Tom's permission). Familiarity with a C-like language (such as C++ or Java) will help you with this course. However, knowing C is not a prerequisite for the course.

High-level computer architecture and systems programming.

The course covers organization of computer systems (in terms of storage units, caches, processors, and I/O controllers) and teaches students assembly-language and C language programming.
Extensive programming exercises introduce students to systems-level programming on Linux systems, as well as to multithreaded programming with POSIX threads.
Students will learn the basics of how compilers work and will be introduced to the functions of operating systems.

– Course Announcement

Guides & Documents

Check out the following useful documents for questions you have about course organization, code style, or tools we use.

Policies

Syllabus
Collaboration Policy
TA Hours Policy
Collaboration Policy & TA Hours Agreement

Course Logistics

Quick links

Assignments

If you're looking for hours for projects or labs, please see hours →

Projects

All projects are released 3:00 pm EST on specified out day and due at 11:59 pm EST on the specified due date. The late deadline is 6 days after normal deadline. To accept your handin, we must have a collaboration policy signed and dated. To check if you have turned one in, please check this form →

Name	Out	Due
Maze	9/6	9/18
Traps	9/25	10/4
Buffer	10/4	10/15
Shell 1	10/21	10/30
Shell 2	10/30	11/6
Malloc	11/6	11/25
Database	11/25	12/13

Project Gear Ups

Looking for guidance as you start your project? Want a refresher on what material has been covered and an outline of what you will be writing? Come to our project gear-up sessions! We’ll also go over how to use the demo(s) and tester(s) and other relevant scripts for each project.

For each project, we will hold a gear-up session soon after it is released. All gear-up sessions will be held in-person, with their time and location posted on EdStem. A recording of the gear-up will be posted here after it occurs. Come prepared with questions!

Date	Topic	Slides	Video
9/9	Maze	Slides	Video
9/27	Traps	Slides	Video
10/6	Buffer	Slides	Video
10/21	Shell 1	Slides	Video
10/30	Shell 2	Slides	Video
11/6	Malloc	Slides	Video
TBD	Database	Slides	Video

Labs

Labs are released on Mondays 12 am EST – besides the first lab which is released on a Friday. They can be done individually or in pairs and can be completed on your own time or during lab sessions. During lab sessions, you will be able to work with others and get help from TAs. You must complete each lab and have it submitted via Gradescope by 11:59 pm EST the night they are due. The late deadline is 1 week after normal deadline. Submissions made during the week after a lab was assigned will receive half credit.

Name	Out	Due
Lab 1: Setup and GDB	9/6	9/15
Lab 2: Strings and Parsing	9/16	9/22
Lab 3: Data	9/23	9/29
Lab 4: atoi	9/30	10/6
Lab 5: Makefiles	10/7	10/13
Optional Lab 6: Performance	10/11	10/20
Lab 7: Signals	10/28	11/3
Lab 8: Alloc	11/4	11/10
Lab 9: Network	11/11	11/17
Lab 10: Concurrency	11/22	12/8

Homeworks

Homeworks are required for graduate students taking the course, and optional for everyone else. Only homeworks submitted by graduate students will be graded. You can submit your homework through Gradescope. If you have questions about the homework, please attend Tom's office hours.

Name	Out	Due
HW1 / Solution	9/6	9/13
HW2 / Solution	9/13	9/20
HW3 / Solution	9/20	9/27
HW4 / Solution	9/27	10/4
HW5 / Solution	10/4	10/18
HW6 / Solution	10/18	10/25
HW7	10/25	11/1
HW8	11/1	11/8
HW9	11/8	11/15

Lectures

Lectures are held every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at Salomon Center 001. They are recorded on Panopto and will be uploaded after each lecture.

	Date	Topic	Readings	Notes	Recording	Take Away Questions	Code
1	Sept 4	Intro to CS33; Intro to C		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
2	Sep 6	Intro to C		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
3	Sept 9	Intro to C		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
4	Sept 11	Intro to C		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
5	Sept 13	Intro to C		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
6	Sept 16	Intro to C		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
7	Sept 18	Data Representation	Chapter 2	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
8	Sept 20	Data Representation	Chapter 2	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
9	Sept 23	Data Representation	Chapter 2	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
10	Sept 25	x86 Assembler Language	Sections 3.1, 3.2	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
11	Sept 27	x86 Assembler Language	Sections 3.4, 3.5	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
12	Sept 30	x86 Assembler Language	Section 3.6	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
13	Oct 2	x86 Assembler Language	Section 3.7	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
14	Oct 4	x86 Assembler Language	Section 3.10	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
15	Oct 7	Processor Arch. and Performance	Sections 5.1-5.6	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
16	Oct 9	Memory Hierarchy I	Sections 5.7-5.12	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
17	Oct 11	Caching	Sections 6.1-6.2	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
	Oct 14	Holiday!
18	Oct 16	Architecture and OS	Sections 8.1-8.4	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
19	Oct 18	Shells and Files	Section 10.1	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
20	Oct 21	Files	Sections 10.2-10.11	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
21	Oct 23	Signals	Sections 8.5-8.6	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
22	Oct 25	Signals		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
23	Oct 28	Memory Hierarchy II	Sections 6.4, 6.5	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
24	Oct 30	Linking and Loading	Sections 6.3	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
25	Nov 1	Memory Management	Sections 7.1-7.9	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
26	Nov 4	Memory Management	Section 9.9	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
27	Nov 6	Virtual Memory	Section 9.9	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
28	Nov 8	Virtual Memory	Sections 9.1, 9.2, 9.6, 9.8	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers	udpClient.c udpServer.c
29	Nov 11	Network Programming	Sections 7.10-7.13	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers	tcpClient.c tcpServer.c
30	Nov 13	Network Programming	Sections 11.1-11.4	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
31	Nov 15	Concurrent Programming	Chapter 12	Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
32	Nov 18	Concurrent Programming		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
33	Nov 20	Concurrent Programming		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
34	Nov 22	Concurrent Programming		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
35	Nov 25	Concurrent Programming		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
	Nov 27	Holiday!
	Nov 29	Holiday!
36	Dec 2	Libraries		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
37	Dec 4	Libraries		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers
38	Dec 6	Summing Up		Slides Notes	Recording	Questions Answers

Hours

Tom's Office Hours

Professor Doeppner's hours will be in CIT 405, x3-7633.

Monday	3-4pm
Wednesday	3-4pm
Friday	3-4pm

TA Hours and Lab Sections

During TA hours, you'll be able to get help from TAs with course concepts as well as project and lab-specific questions. For hours, CS 33 uses a collaborative hours format rather than a queue structure.

During collaborative hours, you'll have the opportunities to work with other students and course staff on projects, labs, or conceptual questions. There is no distinction between project, lab, or conceptual hours - all sorts of questions related to the course are welcome at collaborative hours!

To attend collaborative hours, simply go to the location where they are being held (see the calendar below). Once you show up, the course staff holding hours will group you with other students working on a similar part of the assignment. You don't need to wait in a queue to ask questions to your peers or work on the assignment. The course staff holding hours will rotate helping between groups. Importantly, course staff will not use a queue structure to determine which student(s) to see next. The course staff will still use a queue on Hours to communicate where and when office hours are currently being held. No students will be claimed using the queues on Hours though.

While you can ask questions and work on labs in collaborative hours, we recommend you first attend lab section! During lab section, you'll have the opportunity to work with other students on labs. Members of the course staff can also help you and your classmates complete the lab during this time. We have designed all labs to be completed within a single lab section.

We will be offering remote collaborative hours to remote students who cannot attend in-person collaborative hours. In order to determine when these remote collaborative hours should be offered, we will be sending out a short survey to all remote students in the course. If you cannot attend any office hours due to extenuating circumstances, please contact the HTAs and Tom.

Please see the Course TA Hours Policy for more in-depth information related to TA hours.

TA Hours Calendar

Staff

Professor

King Tom Doeppner

he/him/his

Tom has been at Brown CS since its inception (not Brown's, but Brown CS's). He personally installed Brown's first UNIX system and has been into systems ever since. When not doing CS, he likes photography, which he prefers to do underwater, but now does mostly on land.

HTAs

(cs0330headtas@lists.brown.edu)

Knight Ayman Benjelloun Touimi

he/him

Hi everyone! I’m Ayman, a senior from Casablanca, Morocco studying CS! When I’m not in the CIT, you can find me walking around campus with a coffee, practicing the piano at Steinert (got into it recently!), or playing retro Nintendo games. I’m super excited to be one of your HTAs this semester and can’t wait to meet you all!

Knight Matthias Yee

he/him

Junior from Palos Verdes, California studying CS. I like video games, golf, and browsing c@b.

Knight Nathan Harbison

he/him

Hi! I'm Nathan and I'm a senior from the DC area studying math-CS and comparative literature. I love educational videos, reading, Studio Ghibli, video games, and the outdoors!

he/him

Hello, my name is Siddharta. I'm a 3rd-year student concentrating in APMA-CS and Classics. Outside of my coursework, I enjoy coffee, chocolate and fantasy books.

Note: All staff are mandatory Title IX reporters.