URGENT! SDC computer architecture project : part 4

[rachel83az]

I was actually looking forward to going through Saylor's Computer Architecture course before tackling SDC's course. At a glance, it seems to be better put-together than the SDC course. At least, it seems to cover more of what a course on computer architecture should actually cover. I still plan on going through the Saylor course eventually.

[Pats20]

I supplemented the saylor with sdc to help further my understanding. I read the material and watched all the videos.

[LevelUP]

Armstrongsubero is right that Computer Architecture on Study.com is overall a good course.

If I could refresh everyone's memory, you may recall someone else created a thread asking for help on SDC Computer Architecture and NOBODY said NOTHING for a SOLID MONTH!

Now one of the VERY FEW people that FULLY UNDERSTAND the SDC Computer Architecture course comes in to help explain part of the assignment and people gang up to dismiss what was said and say that person is arrogant.  Please don't mistake passion for arrogance, especially when it's clear that someone is providing valuable information in an attempt to help someone.

At some point in life, you are going to have to have your original thoughts and ideas.  You can't always go to Wikipedia & YouTube when you need answers. This course does really challenge you to figure things out for yourself and ask WHY & HOW questions.

We have just a few more days till the end of this year and this might mean the difference between someone paying $1550 more or maybe not even getting a CS degree at all.  There isn't time for petty arguments. 

It may not seem like it but we have moved closer to solving Computer Architecture or at least have a good strategy for people to follow on how to pass the course.

[Holmes]

This will be my last comment here. Again and again, I will not argue with anyone. I will clarify what might be related to me and to what I have said/written here.

If I could refresh everyone's memory, you may recall someone else created a thread asking for help on SDC Computer Architecture and NOBODY said NOTHING for a SOLID MONTH!

In fact, it was me, not Subero, who revived this thread trying to help. Probably I was wrong about the assignment, but I was truly trying to help. The only way I thought that the requirement makes sense is if they were in fact asking for a rotation (i.e. circular shifting). The assignment wording makes it feel like you will have to check for the `11111111` case in order to avoid an infinite loop.

I might be wrong. But I was trying to help. But again, it was me, not Mr. Subero, who commented here first after the topic was buried.

people gang up to dismiss what was said and say that person is arrogant

No body said the the person is arrogant. I was describing his attitude. Please be fair and read his comments again and see what language he did use. In his first encounter with me, he started off by saying: "what crap are you saying". The general attitude is very hostile, provocative and patronizing at the same time.

Also, watch your language too! Nobody is "ganging" up to dismiss anything. I don't know why you guys are so sensitive with different opinions.

Please don't mistake passion for arrogance

Passion won't make you use words like: "crap", "I'm sick of people who do such and such". Passion won't make you accuse those who have different opinions that they "don't understand the material". That's why I said that his attitude is off and discourages any meaningful arguing, and that's why I only stated (without arguing) that I only criticize the SDC course (not the computer architecture in general). Yet, he attacked again and said that I'm "ignorant" of what the course offers.

Anyways,

Nobody is ganging up against him or you or against anybody.

Nobody is saying that he is an arrogant person. I even apologized for using that word when describing his language and attitude.

[LevelUP]

It's not my job is to go through and judge every word armstrongsubero said.  I personally was more concerned with the content of the post versus how it was said. 

I observed that someone said armstrongsubero comments sounded arrogant, and then the "Like" gang jumped in to like the post.  Nobody has yet thanked armstrongsubero for providing some help with this assignment though nobody is required to.

The thread I was referring to was exxxius's thread which the OP said was doing that course for 2 months now.

When armstrongsubero said, "what crap are you saying" he was saying the solution you gave was incorrect.  

It's clear we "don't understand the material," that's why I and others get sick of this course very quickly.

I agree with you that there should be better communication and we should be nice to each other. However, there are times when tough love is necessary and can be ok as long as the person has good intentions behind it.

Holmes considering you already did some years in a RA Electrical Engineering program, you are going to easily earn a bachelor's degree in less than a year if you put 20hrs a week into it.  We do have a great community of techies on the forum and we do help each other out.  So don't hesitate to reach out.  Peace.

[armstrongsubero]

@LevelUP thanks, they really don't know how much I love this kinda stuff. I eat, breathe and sleep MCUs and FPGAs and I have a LOT of knowledge that could benefit people here but they aren't willing to give the course a chance, and always bashing it.

My intention was really to help, but it seems to me that instead of trying to come to a solution, they always talk about how "worthless" the SDC Computer Architecture course is and how "worthless" a CS degree is and to just "tick the box" and they "didn't learn anything" one person even said they feel stupider after taking the course like what!?

My plan was to work out a nice solution with the OP and guide him to the answer and for anyone else who may read this thread. I think I was honestly the first on the forum to take the course and it was very good. you really have to apply yourself and it seems to me like everyone doing the course expects the final assignment to be a cake walk and its not. Its really not difficult, it just requires you to put in a little work and time. This course is super applicable in industry.

The course does prepare you for the assignment, its gives you the base to work, I'm kinda glad they keep complaining cause now TESU will make some money off them and they have multiple closed book exams and multiple graded assignments and it wont be much different from the single assignment on SDC.

@holmes its not an "opinion", you were WRONG with your statement:

"If the register is 11111111, then your program will continue to shift it forever, because it will never have 0 in the least significant bit (assuming that they mean rotating, not just shifting it)"

It's crap so I said its crap. I don't want someone sometime in the future reading this thinking that. That statement is partly why I decided to jump in after ignoring this thread it when it was first posted.

Maybe crap was too strong, hokem? cockerninny? poppycock? It's not a personal attack at you honestly, it just boils my skin when I see people misleading people with posts like this, its so wrong.

A mistake like this can cause people to die, like literally in the Toyota acceleration issue and Boeing's problem, its misleading information like this taking lives. You may never know, someone here may get a CS degree, work at a startup and are great with DSA, but never paid attention to details like this and cause injury. It happens more than you think. I've worked on medical devices that had people who clearly didn't understand anything beneath the HAL they were working on, anyway enough on that.




And to everyone saying this course is "worthless", look at a new job opening at Tesla, an embedded software engineer for body controls. A CS degree is listed as one of the degree requirements that will not only get you in with a "tick the box" but also provide foundational knowledge you will need for the job. A solid computer architecture understanding, an advanced course in C and maybe paying for a copy of the MISRA standard can get you this job, just saying.

https://www.tesla.com/careers/search/job...ols-111919

If you notice unlike web jobs that list every stack and every language created from ActionScript to WebAssembly and Zig(lol), They require one language C. "Proficient with C, MISRA C is a plus.". For those of you that don't know MISRA C is a standard used in the automotive industry.

At that job you'll use a microcontroller, its going to be a 90% chance its an 32 bit ARM Cortex-M or an 8 bitter (I saw a PIC MCU on a tesla model s board I did some work on), and guess what a lot of the libraries and HALs given by vendors aren't "MIRSA Compliant" so you'll be doing a LOT of bare metal work, a CMSIS library may be your only help, and if they're using an 8-bitter, well you better sleep with the datasheet.

One vendor STMicroelectronics, even provides libraries that are MISRA Compliant, depstire providing a HAL, CubeMx because well most pros roll their own inhouse MISRA or Cert C compliant or Spagetti C HAL (lol). Here is one ST provides, its a tab I have open rn cause I just be happen to be porting some code to an "MM32F031" "Mind Motion" controller for a client since this clone was all they could get (F030s are like platinum now) with the global chip shortage and all.

https://www.st.com/en/embedded-software/...etsf0.html

This "code snippets" package along with the datasheet is sometimes all you have.

If this is what you will be using the SDC course is INVALUABLE in preparing you for such a position and companies will expect you to do that. I'm not in the US but I get a lot of contracts in embedded cause people really don't understand the stuff, but its ESSENTIAL and there is a genuine lack of talent for this. I once helped a customer convert an embedded solution based on Embedded Linux (Toradex module) into a running on an STM32F7 MCU, cut cost to 10% literally, my client said its easy to get embedded Linux guys, that's why he was going to use that but hard to get people who really work with hardware.

And as a CS grad you'll have a leg up on EEs cause once board bring up is done a lot of work will be on adding functionality in software, with this global chip shortage as well you'll have to look up part families and port firmware a lot of work there.

Anyway I could talk on and on about this stuff, but the point I'm making is don't skimp on your computer architecture class, if you learn enough material to really do the assignments it can make or break your career.

If the class and assignments are hard for you, its a GOOD THING. It means you have LEARNING to do.

Even if you don't do it as a job, mess around with hardware a little, get an Arduino or Raspberry Pi if you just want to have some fun, you'll be a MUCH better programmer, if you get into hacking especially that is dominated by python tools, man you'll be a wizard extending with C and assembly and all this bit twiddlery with give you computer superpowers.

As a matter of fact I recommend EVERYONE working with computers read Computer Architecture by Hennessy and Patterson along with Hacker's Delight.

Languages and frameworks come and go, but your computer architecture knowledge will last a lifetime. Right now RISC V is hotttt, if I had time I would delve into it. Man whoever can port x86-64 programs, and especially optimized graphics and ML stuff to RISC V in this pioneer stage could make some serious dough in the future.

This post is for anyone reading this thread now or after hope it helps. I really dont have to do this but a few years ago I got help from this forum so I try to give back when I can.

I may come across as harsh sometimes but this stuff is my world, and I really dislike people saying this and that is useless when industry CRAVES grads with this knowledge.

Ofc I dont mind cause it means I'll have more work. We don't need more software engineers. We just need better ones especially in this chip shortage period, being able to understands hardware enough to port firmware between device families is a skill everyone needs to know, even if you are abstracted away your "optimized" libraries may need to be rewritten to account for software bugs and of course to patch security exploits in your programs. Keep at it!

[rachel83az]

armstrongsubero, it is not allowed to be outright hostile to other students here. Do not ridicule them for not taking this class as seriously as you think they should. Do not tell them that they could kill people because SDC's course didn't teach them to shift 11111111. These are ridiculous and unhelpful statements.

My tutor, who works with hardware/firmware/embedded, tells me that most of the topics covered by this class have absolutely NO bearing on the real world. Almost nobody uses Assembly these days. Almost nobody needs to know about things like Truth Tables or K-Maps. Almost nobody needs to know how to shift the literal 1s and 0s around. You learn these things in school and then promptly forget about them. They do not matter. At all. The only reason my tutor still remembers these things and can help me is because they're enthusiastic about the minutiae. It's good to have the foundations, sure, but almost none of this is applicable to the industry.

You create the chips with Excel Spreadsheets and/or a closed-source programming language that you can't learn without being in the industry first. Seriously. If you want to work in hardware, you need a stomach for tedium combined with tight deadlines, but you don't necessarily need to know what 10110011 means or how to turn it into 11001110. There are too many millions of transistors on the average modern chip to even try to create every single one by hand or understand what each and every one of them needs to do.

(BTW, hardware is a good field to go into if you've got the aptitude for it. People are leaving for the "cooler" software jobs and there aren't nearly enough hardware people for the jobs that are available.)

But, unless someone discovers a passion for such, I doubt that many people here are going to go into hardware. They'll go into website development, app programming, or something similar where you really don't need to know on a daily basis how the inner workings of a computer operate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Not everyone wants to move to Silicon Valley or its equivalents. Sometimes, you just want a better job locally. One you can get with a bit of Python knowledge and a solid understanding of algorithms.

[Pats20]

My tutor, who works with hardware/firmware/embedded, tells me that most of the topics covered by this class have absolutely NO bearing on the real world. Almost nobody uses Assembly these days. Almost nobody needs to know about things like Truth Tables or K-Maps. Almost nobody needs to know how to shift the literal 1s and 0s around. You learn these things in school and then promptly forget about them. They do not matter. At all. The only reason my tutor still remembers these things and can help me is because they're enthusiastic about the minutiae. It's good to have the foundations, sure, but almost none of this is applicable to the industry.


I don’t think this is specific to this sdc course. All cs programs require architecture and all architecture And discrete math courses are going to cover topics such as k maps and truth tables.

Most material In any college major isn’t used a ton in the real world. It’s the problem solving critical thinking skills that are acquired by doing what many of us consider nonsense.

If that’s not for someone that’s fine to. Go to tech school or major in “ applied “ and learn specific applications.

[armstrongsubero]

@racheal83az It's a fact. I've literally seen it happen. Too many NDA stuff to talk about on a public forum, if you PM me we could have a nice chat, people DO get injured and killed from stuff like that and things like the Zune bug (remember that?) Then again that would lead to a talk about safety critical systems and I really don't have the time to explain all that, cause you'll just oppose what I'm saying instead of realizing I'm talking from experience. 

Your "hardware/firmware/embedded" tutor is mistaken if he say's that, how many years experience does he have? does he work in industry? or is he just a tutor? I would love to speak with him to see how deep his knowledge goes and what project's he's worked on and such. I am currently in industry working on REAL WORLD PROJECTS. 

"Almost nobody uses Assembly these days"

This is laughable. The "startup.s" file on literally every ARM Cortex-M core is written in assembly and you will have to look at it some point or another. I'm attaching a screenshot from a project I'm working on right now. If you ever work with GCC (which you will) you WILL need to modify that .s file at some point and your linker script as well, how else will you allocate memory for the stack and heap!?

Has your tutor ever heard of something called DEBUGGING!? I'll attach a screenshot here as well to show you what a 2021 debug view looks like. You will have a "disassembly" view where you can see the assembly as you step though your program. 

Here look at this:

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Whether you use Keil, IAR, MPLAB X, or Eclipse or roll your own setup with Atom or vim (for you old boys) you WILL need to look at your disaeembly view. 

You will also have a "memory view" or "browser" where you will look at the contents of your memory registers as you step through your program. You also have your register view, where you will view your registers extremely important to track your PC values and R0-R12 can tell you everything you need to know.  

If you're working on rolling an inhouse RTOS on ARM cortex how will you handle context switching if not by using the PENDSV register and doing the switch in assembly? Even if you use a custom RTOS the port for your chip will have assembly "port" specific file will also have inline assembly (especially if you're using GCC) to handle interrupt enables and disables etc. Almost any hard real time system will include inline assembly. 

If you don't know assembly how will you be able to see what this does:

__attribute__ ((naked, optimize("-fno-stack-protector")))
void xRegister_Handler(void) {
__asm volatile (
)

When you see it? What if you're writing real time code and dont want to push anything to the stack? Even if you don't write assembly you need to be able to read it. Otherwise you're wasting your time. Tell your "hardware/firmware/embeed" "tutor" I said that. 

"none of this is applicable to industry"

WHAT!? THE WORD REGISTER COMES UP MORE OFTEN THAN ANYTHING ELSE. Want to use SPI? go to the datasheet look at the associated registers! I2C look at the registers for that! My code isn't working start the J-link see what VALUE is in that REGISTER. 

"you don't necessarily need to know what 10110011 means or how to turn it into 11001110"

What!? So when you are DEBUGGING your program how will know what is happening in your MCU registers!? 

If I recall that course also had a section on shift registers. SPI is used so much and its implemented using shift registers. 

I could go on all day about how every single module in that course is applicable to industry. 

"People are leaving for the "cooler" software jobs and there aren't nearly enough hardware people for the jobs that are available"


It's more like most people CAN'T do those kind of jobs because they lack the deep knowledge and experience. Embedded software requires you to have a DEEP COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE knowledge and you need to teach yourself electronics as well. You also must be good with OS concepts (you'll work with an RTOS or Linux.. even if its Yocto at some point) and you must MASTER data structures and algorithms. According to the job you are in that can mean the difference between spending $2 on a chip or $10. 

You can't leetcode your way there, and you NEED TO KNOW what's happening intuitively. There is no 6 month bootcamp, no 1 month course. Same thing with analog design. I don't know where you got your info from. I know many "ex-google" and "ex-amazon" software engineers that form hardware startups, worked on a few of those products. Look at kickstarter, the most funded tech projects tend to be some new "gizmo". Look at Drones and 3D printers, they're all embedded systems. Look at the pebble smartwatch, and  the Coolest Cooler. In fact here is a list of the top funded kickstarted projects in HISTORY:

Top 20 Most Funded Kickstarter Projects of All Time (2019) - StartupBros

The VAST majority are embedded systems projects. 

People WISH to work on these things. They crave to do something like this. THESE ARE THE COOLER JOBS. 

Code monkeys writing web apps are a dime a dozen, my email is filled with spam emails with people from India offering their services for those kinda jobs. Finding people with the skills to help you take a project to market rarer than gold. 


"They'll go into website development, app programming, or something similar where you really don't need to know on a daily basis how the inner workings of a computer operate"

Have you ever worked in a mobile app? Ever heard of the Native Development Kit? What happens when you need better data from the sensors from your phone for your app? 

If you end up in AI or ML or Game Development or anything where you need to have your code perform well, you will need to use C or C++ or Rust (up and coming) to get better performance which requires you to understand the hardware. 

If you end up working in security, then to be a good hacker or to secure against crackers (who WILL have low level hardware knowledge) to set yourself apart you will need to know C and assembly. The nasty viruses and trojans are written in assembly.  Also what if you have to reverse engineer something? You have to use IDA Pro or similar for disassembly.

No wonder the industry is in turmoil. When things break, you WILL need that knowledge. These are the people your future boss is hoping to hire.

They're called ROCKSTARS, GURUS, NINJAS and SNOBs. They are the ones "regular" programmers say "don't exist" or "is just a myth".

These guys LOVE computing. It is thier LIFE. When you're sleeping they're up breaking things and fixing things and digging deeper, it's a yearning to always get deeper. 

You are complaining about a silly course. I once wrote my own processor architecture with Clash (Haskell) generated VHDL together with hand written VHDL, programmed it in binary, wrote my own assembler and LISP interpreter and ported a GCC compiler then wrote an RTOS to run on top of it. and that was for FUN. 

That's the level programmers must strive to reach at. If I need to design an IoT device I can design the system, spec all the parts, design the PCB, design the enclosure prototype in SolidWorks, write all the firmware, roll my own HAL and RTOS if I need to that syncs with AWS via MQTT, write the web app front end, backend and deploy it and the native app for your iphone or android to get that data. If you've miles out I can build a LoRa gateway to sync back up with your mobile provider and get the data to your phone. Heck if you want to host in house I can open Cisco IOS and get working. Your coworkers computer broke down? Won't turn on? Give me, I'll open it an repair it, oh look its a cap on the SMPS giving trouble. 

I am confident I can get any programming job and excel in any role, I'm good at what I do and I know my industry inside out. I am but a tiny bug who's met literal computer gods working in semiconductor and compiler design and there are guys that write algortihms in ways I cant even describe, you look at their solution in awe. I've had to ask or help when something from their side breaks (silicon bug, compiler issue). 

"you can't learn without being in the industry first."

Don't tell me what's used and not used in industry. I've been around the block. 

As am matter of fact as I'm typing this I really am not in the mood to explain all this stuff, I charge by the hour for consulting and if you want more info I think you'll have to pay me, I really was trying to help the OP I'm too busy to have a discussion with people with no real world experience telling me about a field I've worked in for years and spend all my free time on.

Sorry OP but you're on your own. 

Check out my youtube channel or read one of my books or something. I also maintain a public github repo with simple projects for beginners. I  have a lot of stuff fro beginners, since they need the most help. When you work in industry a bit, then we can talk. 

It may sound "arrogant" to you, but the knowledge gap is too wide to continue this discussion further, you don't want to learn, you want to tell me I'm wrong. I really cant believe someone with clearly no experience telling me who does this for a living about what the industry uses or not. You're the arrogant one.

---

I'm sensing a lot of Dunning-Kruger effect here from your "tutor" @racheal83az

---

For the benefit of anyone reading this post, I forgot to attach these are well this is from the FreeRTOS ARM_CM0 port, provided by ST. These are all in assembly. FreeRTOS is one of the most used RTOSs currently, along with WindRiver and UC/OS II and III.  

Learn ARM assembly. You'll be glad you did. 


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[Cofffeee]

Only arrogant person will consider their writing so important so he/she writes pages on the topic on the forum.
Smart person would not do so. Smart people dont speak or write much..... they say / write little and to the point...
To add, frequently emotional and social Intelligence more important than intellectual Intelligence.... maybe it gives some clue to the individual whats wrong with his/ her posts.