Architecture Lab Release Notes

5/1/2011

• Students can now use the conditional move instructions to avoid the performance problems of conditional jumps.
• The benchmark test has a random selection of positive vs. negative numbers. So, conditional moves are really the way to go.
• The correctness check is more robust, looking for things like overshooting the array bounds.
• Added a 1000-byte limit on the size of the object code for the ncopy function.
• Added Perl scripts in src/ptest that provide comprehensive regression testing of the different Y86 simulators:
  • Tests each individual instruction type.
  • Tests all of the jump types under different conditions.
  • Tests different pipeline control combinations.
  • Tests many different hazard possibilities.
• Incorporated the regresssion tests in src/ptest into the autograding of the student solutions for parts B and C.

• Fixed problem that caused some newer Linux distributions to get tk.h from /usr/local/include instead of /usr/include. Thanks to Prof. Dr. Gerd Doeben-Henisch, Fachhochschule Frankfurt.

12/22/2003

• Fixed minor bug that caused some compilers to complain. Changed type of return value from getopt() from char to int. Thanks to Morgan Harvey, Portland State University.

8/5/2002

• Initial release.