CS 3220 – Processor Design – B

CS 3300 – Software Engineering – A

CS 3210 – Operating Systems Design – A

CETL 2000 – TA Prep – Pass (Could only take it as Pass/Fail)

CS 4903 – TA Class – A

Processor Design was a surprise B. I really understood everything and thought I did well on the final. I think the final project is what did me in. We had to completely implement the processor for our ISA on our hardware. I thought we made good progress, but we didn’t fully complete the project. Either way, I’m happy with my grades.

One more semester to go!!

Where have I been this past month?

Well, this is definitely the busiest semester I’ve ever had at Georgia Tech. To go along with that, I attended a career fair and lined up a few interviews in the process. I’m still trying to decide between grad school and the work force, so I decided I’d see what opportunities are out there. So far I’ve had interviews with Bloomberg, GEICO, and Oracle. I had a second round interview with GEICO and I have a second round interview scheduled with Oracle.

We’re half way through the semester now, so I have a good feel for my classes.

Processor Design (CS 3220) is the most time consuming but also the most interesting class this semester. We’re basically implementing an entire ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) on a piece of actual hardware using Verilog. My partner and I implemented the ISA in perl, which is good, because I’ve been wanting to learn perl.

Software Engineering (CS 3300) is interesting as well. We’ve built a program from the ground up doing all documentation before actually coding (Waterfall Process). Now we’re coding the application and it does seem easier to code considering the amount of detail that went into the planning. I believe in our next project we’ll be doing the reverse.

OS Design (CS 3210) is different than I thought it would be. There’s a lot of lecturing and not as much hands on lab work. Part of the blame has been the software we’re using for our simulations, but now that it’s fixed, we still haven’t done as much lab work as I had hoped we would. Hopefully it’ll pick up in the second half of the semester.

Finally, TAing for CS 1316 has been fun. I enjoy teaching the recitations (assuming I’m prepared) and also teaching students in the one-on-one office hours. I’m determined to help non-CS majors learn Java!!

The CETL 2000 class, for first time TAs, is informative, but I could think of better things to do with an extra hour in the morning (zzzzzz).

In unrelated school / web news, THE TAMPA BAY RAYS ARE IN THE ALCS!!!!!!

I’ve been a Rays fan since I’ve been in college (~4 years) and it’s amazing to see how far they’ve come. From worst record in baseball and finishing last in all but 1 season since they’ve been a team (in the 1 season, they finished second to last and open champaigne bottles to celebrate not being in last) to winning the AL East and having a chance to go to the World Series. That’s quite an amazing feat and shows how any team can bring the right people together, work hard, and get things done without having to buy their way to a championship, even though it hasn’t worked for the Yankees for a while.

Yellow Jackets are off to a good start too, looks like Paul Johnson’s offense is starting to come together. I predicted we’d have 3 turnovers per game due to the amount of tossing and quick inside handoffs that go along with the triple option, but so far they’ve proved me wrong. I hope they keep it up!

Until next time (zzzzzzz)

Fall semester is in week 2 now and classes are starting to show their colors. I dropped the physics department’s solar system class, PHYS 2021, and the lab. They’ve been replaced with a TA class for CS 1316 and the 1 credit hour intro TA class for first timers. TAing has been fun so far and I’m glad I did it. CS 3210, Design Operating Systems, looks like it’ll be a fun class. It’s half lecture half lab, so we’re going to get our hands dirty with the kernel and such. CS 3220, Processor Design, also looks fun. We’re programming on real hardware, yet again getting our hands dirty. Finally CS 3300, Software Engineering, is interesting so far. The class is actually defining the requirements for the first project and then each group is working on a separate part, much like it would be done in the real world. CS 3300 seems like it will be the most work, there are a lot of document write ups, group meetings, and coding. Ok, it’s 3am and I work at 10am.. time to go.

There is an advantage to doing well in your classes. Final exam exemptions!! I was able to exempt BOTH of my finals this semester thanks to A averages in both classes. This turns 2 weeks off into 3 weeks off. So, I’m done! Two more semesters to go and then it’s either grad school or job market.

My Fall semester shapes up as follows:

• CS 3210 – Design Operating Systems
• CS 3220 – Processor Design
• CS 3300 – Intro to Software Engineering
• PHYS 2021 – Solar System
• PHYS 2801 – Solar System Lab

13 hours total. Shouldn’t be too bad. Good luck to everyone on their finals and their fall semesters.

My newest project involved me and a partner creating a program for Introduction to Information Security (CS 4235) where we crack a server’s password and send a message over a covert channel. My partner and I decided to do the program in C. The last time I programmed in C was when I was in Systems and Networks (CS 2200) in Fall of ‘07. Even then, the programs were usually pre-written with students needing to fill in methods. This program was from scratch.

The reason we chose C was because of the low level operations needed and also because me and my partner thought we should catch back up on our C skills. I’m glad we made the decision to do it. We were able to finish the program rather quickly and there is a noticeable performance difference with the program, more so then if we had written it in Java.

The whole experience made me want to learn C++ or C#. I’ve never used either of these languages and I’ve also never messed with Visual Studio. It seems like those are good languages to know since a lot of programs are written in them, especially C++. I also heard that the language to program apps for the iPhone is Objective C.

All in all I was happy to be writing in C again. There’s something gratifying working so low on the computing level and having more control over all resources, even though dynamic data structures can be a real pain. I hope my program doesn’t have any buffer overflows