An assembler or machine program for a given architecture
========================================================

Write an assembler, autocode or a machine code program for a chosen
architecture (the architecture and the algorithm to implement will be
given separately). Run this program in the emulator.

Answer the following questions and carry out the following tasks:

1. Write and assembler or a machine code program for a given
algorithm. If a program is written in machine code, provide the
program in octal or hex, with instruction and operand mnemonics
provided in comments. Use symbolic labels for data areas and control
transfer locations. Comment *each* line of the code explaining what
this line does.

2. Write and introductory comment explaining what the program does,
what algorithm is implemented and what are the peculiarities of
implementation, what are its inputs and outputs.

3. Run the program in the emulator. Document all steps and commands
necessary to run the program. The program must run on Vilnius
University Linux computers, the current LTS Linux Mint, Debian or
Ubuntu systems (in at least one such system).

4. Document the use of the program, the location of the input data,
the formats of the input files, the formats of the output files (for
the emulator). If some inputs or outputs are binary (e.g. magnetic
tape, drum or HDD dumps), describe or provide tools to inspect those
data and convert them to a human-readable text form. All tools MUST be
Free/Libre Open Source Software (F/LOSS). Proprietary software
solutions are *not* accepted.

5. Write a short report (README) explaining your experiments and
making it straightforward to reproduce your run. Describe all
prerequisites (external packages) necessary to run you
program. Provide example commands, scripts, command histories and/or
screen shots for your runs. Make sure your computation can be
reproduced easily, preferably in an automatic way (using a short
simple shell script or Makefile).

6. Commit all your files to a version control system (Subversion, Git,
Mercurial or RCS). When submitting your assignment, provide a single
archive (.zip, .7z, .tgz, .tbz or .txz file with appropriate format)
with all your experiment files, program source code, compiled,
assembled, linked code, emulator inputs and outputs. Provide your
working copy *and*, if the repository is not publicly accessible, the
repository itself (with only this one assignment) in the
archive. Group files into appropriate directories so that they are
easy to find. Give reasonable, easy-to-recognise (not cryptic) names
for you files. If special coding (e.g. MD5 hashes or UUIDs) are used
for file names for technical reasons, explain that use in the README
file.

RAR files are *not* accepted!

7. Use version control throughout the work. Commit and explain in the
log message every step of you investigation. Write meaningful,
accurate log message (full sentences with decent wording and
punctuation). Your repository must be accessible during the grading –
it must be public on some server visible on the internet (your private
server, Gitlab, Github, Bitbucket, SourceForge) or the repository must
be provided in the archive in a separate directory. The emulator
itself should not be included if it can be obtained freely (as F/LOSS
software). If it was compiled or configured in some special way,
however, this must be described.

8. Provide a clean working copy for your project: there should be no
uncommitted changes, no "unknown" files, the working copy must be in
the latest revision of the trunk/master that contains the final result
and is meant for grading .

9. Discuss the efficiency of your program. What is the size/speed
tradeoff in your design? In other words, can you make your program
smaller (using less memory) at the expense of its speed, or faster but
larger? What are the real timings of your program run (always provide
exact description of your hardware, operating system and the emulator,
with exact versions, when reporting timings)?  How much slower/faster
is you program than the original computer with this architecture (if
the physical architecture is not available, provide a theoretical
estimate)?

10. Make sure you cite *all* relevant sources of information that you
have used in your work. At least two sources must be among the cited
ones: the description of the architecture that you are investigating
and the description of the algorithm that you are implementing. The
sources must be cited using Harvard reference style (University of
Wolverhampton, 2022). Citations must be in the text and the full
bibliography of the sources must be provided at the end of your report
(that could be a README file). Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2023) are
permitted of the articles are high quality, informative and to the
point (most of them are). If ChatGPT or other Large Language Models
are used, they MUST be cited as sources, with publicly available URL,
access date and time, tool version and the full prompt.

References:

University of Wolverhampton (2022) Harvard referencing (Cite them
right): the basics. 2nd edition. URL:
https://www.wlv.ac.uk/lib/media/departments/lis/skills/study-guides/LS134-Harvard-Quick-Guide.pdf

Wikipedia (2024) Wikipedia. URL:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia [accessed
2024-11-04T09:16+02:00, permalink
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia&oldid=1254652936]