CMSC216: Course Schedule and Materials

Schedule and Course Materials

All materials are subject to change and are marked internally with their latest update time.

Week	Dates		Lecture / Projects	Links	Reading
			Course Mechanics / Code Environment	Slides	Code Environment
1	31-Aug	Mon	No Discussion		K&R C book OR
		Tue	Introduction to C		C Refs on Canvas
		Wed	Environment Setup, Lab1
		Thu	C Basics
2	07-Sep	Mon	Labor Day: No Classes
		Tue	Basic Types, Pointers / Addresses
		Wed	Lab02 Overview
		Thu	Void Ptrs, Arrays
3	14-Sep	Mon	C I/O Tutorial, Lab03	Prev. Slides
		Tue	Allocation, Valgrind	Continued
		Wed	Valgrind Debugging
		Thu	Structs, I/O
4	21-Sep	Mon	Project 1 Due: Mon 21-Sep
		Mon	Practice Exams
		Tue	Binary Encoding, Number Systems		CSAPP: 2.1-2.3
		Wed	Review
		Thu	Exam 1 Thu 24-Sep (Exam Rules)
5	28-Sep	Mon	GDB Usage and Practice, Lab04		Quick Guide to GDB
		Tue	Two's Complement, Bit Operations
		Wed	Bit Shifting
		Thu	Assembly Basics, Data movement		CSAPP: 3.1-3.5
6	05-Oct	Mon	Assembly Coding Examples, Lab05
		Tue	ASM Data Movement, Memory Access		CSAPP: 3.6-3.7
		Wed	Assembly Arithmetic
		Thu	Assembly Arithmetic, Division
		Fri	P2 Due Fri 09-Oct
7	12-Oct	Mon	Fall Break: No Class Mon/Tue 🍂

		Wed	GDB with Compiled Code, Lab06		CSAPP: 3.8-3.10
		Thu	ASM RIP Compare, Test, Jump
8	19-Oct	Mon	Caller/Callee Save Regs
		Tue	ASM Function Calls
		Wed	Assembly Globals
		Thu	ASM Globals/Data, Buffer Overflow
9	26-Oct	Mon	Assembly Stack Space
		Tue	Assembly Wrap-Up
		Wed	Practice Exams
		Thu	Exceptional Control Flow, Processes		CSAPP: 8
		Fri	P3 Due Fri 30-Oct
10	02-Nov	Mon	Practice Exams
		Tue	Exam 2 Thu 03-Nov
		Wed	Processes, Fork, Wait, Lab08
		Thu	Unix read() / write()		CSAPP: 10
11	09-Nov	Mon	Files Stats via stat()
		Tue	Unix redirection, stat()
		Wed	make and Makefiles
		Thu	Timing, Strides, and Cache		CSAPP: 6
12	16-Nov	Mon	I/O Redirection
		Tue	Memory Pyramid, Matrix layout
		Wed	Cache Analysis
		Thu	Hardware Demo, VirtMem Overview		CSAPP: 9
13	23-Nov	Mon	P4 Due Mon 23-Nov
		Mon	Matrices and Cache Optimization
		Tue	Page Tables, mmap()

	25-Nov	Wed	Thanksgiving Break: Wed-Fri 🦃
14	30-Nov	Mon	Practice Exams
		Tue	Exam 3 Tue 01-Dec
		Wed	Memory Mapped Arrays, Lab11
		Thu	Threads, Mutex, Coordination		CSAPP: 12
15	07-Dec	Mon	Threads
		Tue	Advanced Thread usage
		Wed	Practice Exams
		Thu	Finale / Review
		Fri	P5 Due Fri 11-Dec
	12-Dec	Sat	Reading Day 📚

	16-Dec	Tue	Final Exam
			Tue 15-Dec 6:30pm-8:30pm
			Location To Be Determined
			(Common Final Exam Time)

Textbooks

Required Textbook (CSAPP): Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, Third Edition by R. Bryant, D. O'Hallaron, Pearson, 2016

Optional (K&R C Book): The C Programming Language, Second Edition by Brian Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie, Prentice Hall 1988

Other free C references are listed on the course Canvas Site

CMSC216: Course Schedule and Materials

Sections 1xx / 2xx

University of Maryland

4 credits, Fall 2026

Schedule and Course Materials

Textbooks

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