CSE 410 Homework 1: Numerical Representations and Basic ISAs

Assigned Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Due Date

Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Paper copies may be handed in at the beginning of class that day.
PDF copies may be submitted online by 11 pm.

Introduction

The purpose of written homework assignments is to get you thinking about the topics being covered in lecture and in readings in the textbook which are not represented in the hands-on, programming lab assignments. These written assignments also better prepare you for course examinations. It is worth noting that the book contains many pratice problems similar to the problems we ask on these written assignments. The solutions for those practice problems are located at the end of each chapter and should give you a feel for the kind of answers we expect you to turn in for these kind of assignments.

Logistics

Since these written homeworks are not programming lab assignments, you will turn in your assignment online as electronic documents in PDF format or on paper in class on the due date.

Grading

Due to the large number of students in the class, we reserve the right to grade only a subset of the problems assigned in any written homework assignment for correctness. However, we expect you to answer all of the questions in an assignment and therefore will take that into account when calculating your grade for an assignment. For example, if we choose only to grade the 1st and 3rd questions in this assignment, you would receive full credit for the assignment by answering these problems correctly. However, if you were not to answer all of the questions in an assignment, we would scale your score by a factor of num_questions_answered / num_questions_assigned. So in this example, if you only submitted answers to the 1st, and 3rd questions, you would receive only 2/3 of your score. In conclusion, try your best and be sure to answer all questions in each written homework assignment.

We will provide solutions to all of the problems in the written homework assignments in a timely fashion after the assignment is due. Since the late policy affords you a maximum of two late days, we cannot release solutions until the Friday following the assignment's due date, at the earliest.

Questions

  1. What is the 32-bit and 64-bit hexadecimal value of the number -256 if:
    1. It is represented with the sign-and-magnitude representation?
    2. It is represented in ones' complement representation?
    3. It is represented in twos' complement representation?
  2. From the textbook: Problem 3.54
  3. From the textbook: Problem 3.56

Notes

Make sure you are using the 2nd edition of Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective. If you're not using the right book, you might be doing the wrong problems!

Submitting Your Work

Please either hand in a paper copy at the beginning of class on the due date, or turn in a PDF file containing your answers to the Catalyst drop box linked from the CSE 410 main web page. We will not accept electronic submissions that are not in PDF format. (Scanned copies of handwritten files are okay, as long as the files are small - a few MB at the most - and the copies are legible, but PDF files produced with a text editor or word processor are preferred.)