Computer Architecture and Assembly Language Assignment 1

Programming environment
For this assignment you must ensure your work executes correctly on the simulator
within AVR Studio as installed on workstations in ECS 249. If you have installed AVR
Studio on your own computer then you are welcome to do much of the
programming work on your machine. If this is the case, however, then you must
allow enough time to ensure your solutions work on the lab machines. If your
submission fails to work on a lab machine, the fault is very rarely that the lab
workstations. “It worked on my machine!” will be treated as the equivalent of “The
dog ate my homework!”

Objectives of this assignment
• Understand short problem descriptions for which an assembly-language
solution is required.
• Use AVR assembly language to write solutions to three such small problem.
• Use AVR Studio to implement, simulate and test your solution. (We will not
need to use the Arduino mega2560 boards for this assignment.)
• Hand draw a flowchart corresponding to your solution to the first problem.
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Part (a): Computing even parity
Digital-communication hardware and software often include circuity and code for
detecting errors in data transmission. The possible kinds of errors are large in
number, and their detection and correction is sometimes the topic of upper-level
Computer Science courses. In a nutshell, however, the concern is that bits sent by a
data transmitter are sometimes not the same bits that arrive at the data receiver.
That is, if the data transmitter sends this byte:
0b10101011
but this is received instead:
0b00101011
then the data receiver has the wrong data, and would need some way to determine
that this was the case. In response to the error, the same receiver might discard the
byte, or ask the sender to retransmit it, or take some other combination of steps.
A technique for detecting one-bit errors is to associate with each byte a parity bit. If
an even parity bit is transmitted along with the byte, then the number of all set bits in
the byte plus the value of the parity bit must sum to an even number. In our example
above involving the data transmitter, the chosen parity bit would be 1 (i.e., five set
bits in 0xAB, plus one set parity bit, equals six set bits). The data receiver has the
corrupted byte as shown (0x2B) plus the parity bit value, and determines that the
number of set bits is five (i.e., four bits in the byte, plus the set parity bit, resulting in
five set bits, which is an odd number). Given that five is not an even number, the
receiver can conclude there was an error in transmission. Note that the receiver can
only detect an error with the parity bit; more is needed to correct the error.
Your main task for part (a) is to complete the code in the file named parity.asm
that has been provided for you. Please read the file for more detail on what is
required. Amongst other AVR machine instructions, you will need to use bit shift,
logical AND, arithmetic ADD, and branching. Do not use functions. You must also
draw by hand the flowchart of your solution and submit a scan or smartphone photo
of the diagram as part of your assignment submission; please ensure this is a JPEG
or PDF named “parity_flowchart.jpg” or “parity_flowchart.pdf” depending
on the file format you have chosen.
Part (b): Reversing the order of bits in a word
Recall that in our course we define a word to be a 16-bit sequence (i.e., two
consecutive bytes). For some algorithms it is useful to have a reversed version of
that 16-bit sequence. (The deeply curious can read a brief description about such
use in Fast Fourier Transform algorithm implementations by visiting Wikipedia at
this link: http://bit.ly/2rnvwz6).
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Your task for part (b) is to complete the code in reverse.asm that has been
provided for you. Please read this file for more detail on what is required. Amongst
other AVR machine instructions, you will need to use bit shift, logical AND,
arithmetic ADD, and branching. Do not use functions.
Part (c): An implementation of modulus
You are already familiar with modulus operations from first-year programming
courses. Usually these are presented as the “%” binary operation and explained to
you as the equivalent of finding the remainder from integer division operations.
It can also be explained as the result of successive subtractions. For example,
consider the expression M % N where M = 370 and N = 120. If we repeatedly
subtract until we have a value less than N, then that value must be M % N.
• 370 – 120 = 250 (subtraction #1)
• 250 – 120 = 130 (subtraction #2)
• 130 – 120 = 10 (subtraction #3)
The value of 10 obtained from the last subtraction is therefore 370 % 120.
Your task for part (a) is to complete the code in modulo.asm that has been provided
for you. In that file there are some comments giving several simplifying
assumptions. For example, the value M will always be a positive two’s-complement
number; the value N will always be a two’s complement positive number less than
128. One challenge you might face, however, is how to determine when to stop
subtractions. The AVR instruction-set architecture does not have a “less than” or
“greater than” instruction. (Hint: If you were to do one more subtraction than
needed, the carry bit would be set to indicate a “borrow” would be needed in order
to ripple up the subtraction of more-significant bytes.)
Amongst other AVR machine instructions you will need to use bit shift, logical AND,
arithmetic ADD, and branching. Do not use functions. You need not worry about
error checking of M and N values – you may assume that only those values satisfying
the constraints given in the skeleton ASM will be used to test your solution.
What you must submit
• Your completed work in the three source code files (parity.asm,
reverse.asm, modulo.asm). Do not change the names of these files!
• Your work must use the provided skeleton files. Any other kinds of solutions
will not be accepted.
• The scan / smartphone photo of your hand-drawn flowchart with the name
of “parity_flowchart.jpg” or “parity_flowchart.pdf” depending on the
format you have chosen.
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Evaluation
• 2 marks: Parity solution is correct for different byte values (part a).
• 1 mark: Hand-drawn flowchart for parity solution is correctly prepared (part
a).
• 3 marks: Reverse solution is correct for different word values (part b).
• 3 marks: Modulo solution is correct for different values of M and N (part c).
• 1 mark: All submitted code properly formatted (i.e., indenting and comment
are correctly used), and files correctly named.
Total marks: 10