Lecture: intro

Overview

• goals
  • build something cool and have fun! (examples)
  • learn from technical manuals and open-source projects
• prereq
  • CSE 451
  • example: JOS
  • q: what project did you use in 451?
• class structure
  • lectures, guest talks, paper discussions
  • exercises
    • xv6
      • a small teaching OS with a set of labs
      • can be used as a basis for project
    • paper questions: due before lecture
    • you are encouraged to collaborate in groups (can be different from your project group)
    • each group needs to submit only one copy
  • project
    • form groups (2-4); at least two people
    • proposal: see the projects page for some ideas; feel free to pursue your own!
    • milestone reports and project meetings
    • demo
    • final report and code
    • each group needs to submit only one copy of proposal/report
  • grading

Today’s plan

• why RISC-V?
  • what ISAs have you worked with before?
  • open ISA: Instruction Sets Want To Be Free: A Case for RISC-V (YouTube), by Dave Patterson
  • clean-slate design
    • do you remember the SMP booting process on x86?
    • JOS (x86): boot.S, entry.S, init.c, lapic.c, mpentry.S
    • xv6 (RISC-V): entry.S, main.c
  • extensible: in the next few weeks we will see applications in multicore, security, cryptocurrency wallet, networking, etc.
  • increasingly popular: GCC/LLVM, QEMU, Linux/FreeBSD, and many others
  • many new opportunities
• xv6 walkthrough
  • goal: help you get familar with RISC-V
  • the xv6 book and RISC-V manuals (see the overview page)
  • tool setup
  • booting
  • we will do three labs; check CSEP551 or 6.828 if you’re interested in the full set