CS-2011, Machine Organization and

Assembly Language, D-term 2013

Data Lab: Manipulating Bits

Assigned: March 12, 2013; Due: Friday, March 22, 2013, 11:59PM

1. Introduction

The purpose of this assignment is to become more familiar with bit-level representations of integers
and floating point numbers. You’ll do this by solving a series of programming “puzzles.” Many of these
puzzles are quite artificial, but you’ll find yourself thinking much more about bits in working your way
through them.

2. Logistics

This is an individual project. All submissions are electronic. Clarifications and corrections will be
posted on the course Web page.

3. Handout Instructions
All of the files for this lab assignment are contained in a single Linux tar file. To obtain the file, go to
the course web site http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~cs2011/d13 and select Projects. This will take you to the
myWPI folder containing project assignments for this course. You will need to sign in with your WPI
userID and password. In this folder, select the link labeled datalab-handout-32bit.tar or the
link datalab-handout-CCC.tar. Select the former for a generic 32-bit Linux system and the latter
if you are working on the CCC Linux systems.
Save your selected file to a (protected) directory on the Linux machine on which you plan to work.
Then expand your selected tar file using appropriate one of the following commands:–
linux> tar xvf datalab-handout-32bit.tar
linux> tar xvf datalab-handout-CCC.tar
This will cause a number of files to be unpacked in the directory. The only file you will be modifying
and submitting is bits.c.
The bits.c file contains a skeleton for each of the 15 programming puzzles. Your assignment is to
complete each function skeleton using only straight-line code for the integer puzzles (i.e., no loops or
conditionals) and a limited number of C arithmetic and logical operators. Specifically, you are only
allowed to use the following eight operators:–
! ~ & ^ | + << >>
A few of the functions further restrict this list. Also, you are not allowed to use any constants longer
than 8 bits. See the comments in bits.c for detailed rules and a discussion of the desired coding style.

Datalab 1 March 22, 2013

4. The Puzzles

This section describes the puzzles that you will be solving in bits.c.
4.1 Bit Manipulations
Table 1 describes a set of functions that manipulate and test sets of bits. The “Rating” field gives the
difficulty rating (the number of points) for the puzzle, and the “Max ops” field gives the maximum
number of operators you are allowed to use to implement each function. See the comments in bits.c
for more details on the desired behavior of the functions. You may also refer to the test functions in
tests.c. These are used as reference functions to express the correct behavior of your functions,
although they don’t satisfy the coding rules for your functions.
Name Description Rating Max Ops
bitOr(x,y) x & y using only & and ~ 1 8
upperBits(x,n) Pads n upper bits with 1’s. 2 6
logicalShift(x,n) Shift right logical. 3 20
howManyBits(x) Return the minimum number of bits required 4 40
to represent x in twos complement.
Table 1: Bit-Level Manipulation Functions.

4.2 Two’s Complement Arithmetic

Table 2 describes a set of functions that make use of the two’s complement representation of integers.
Again, refer to the comments in bits.c and the reference versions in tests.c for more infor-
mation.
Name Description Rating Max Ops
Negate(x) Return –x 2 5
absVal(x) The absolute value of an integer 4 10
isTmin(x) Returns 1 if x is the minimum two’s com- 1 10
plement number or zero otherwise
fitsBits(x,n) Return 1 if can be represented as an n-bit, 2 15
twos complement integer
rotateLeft(x, n) Rotate x to the left by n 3 25
isNonNegative(x) Return 1 if x >= 0, zero otherwise 3 6
isGreater(x, y) Return 1 if x > y, zero otherwise 3 24
isPower2(x) Return 1 if x is a power of two, zero other- 4 20
wise
Table 3: Arithmetic Functions.

4.3 Floating-Point Operations

For this part of the assignment, you will implement some common single-precision floating-point
operations. In this section, you are allowed to use standard control structures (conditionals, loops), and
you may use both int and unsigned data types, including arbitrary unsigned and integer constants.
You may not use any unions, structs, or arrays. Most significantly, you may not use any floating point
data types, operations, or constants. Instead, any floating-point operand will be passed to the function

Datalab 2 March 22, 2013

as having type unsigned, and any returned floating-point value will be of type unsigned. Your code
should perform the bit manipulations that implement the specified floating point operations.
Table 4 describes a set of functions that operate on the bit-level representations of floating-point
numbers. Refer to the comments in bits.c and the reference versions in tests.c for more in-
formation.
Name Description Rating Max Ops
float_abs(uf) Compute absolute value of f 2 10
float_f2i(uf) Compute (int)f 4 30
float_half(uf) Computer 0.5*f 4 30
Table 4: Floating-Point Functions. Value f is the floating-point number having the same bit
representation as the unsigned integer uf.
All of these floating point functions must handle the full range of possible argument values, including
not-a-number (NaN) and infinity. The IEEE standard does not specify precisely how to handle NaN’s,
and the IA32 behavior is a bit obscure. We will follow a convention that for any function returning a
NaN value, it will return the one with bit representation 0x7FC00000.
The included program fshow helps you understand the structure of floating point numbers. To
compile fshow, switch to the handout directory and type:
linux> make
You can use fshow to see what an arbitrary pattern represents as a floating-point number:
linux> ./fshow 2080374784
Floating point value 2.658455992e+36
Bit Representation 0x7c000000, sign = 0, exponent = f8, fraction = 000000
Normalized. 1.0000000000 X 2^(121)
You can also give fshow hexadecimal and floating point values, and it will decipher their bit structure.

5. Evaluation

Your score will be computed out of a maximum of 76 points based on the following distribution:
41 Correctness points.
30 Performance points.
5 Style points.
Correctness points. The 15 puzzles you must solve have been given a difficulty rating between 1 and 4,
such that their weighted sum totals to 41. We will evaluate your functions using the btest program,
which is described in the next section. You will get full credit for a puzzle if it passes all of the tests
performed by btest, and no credit otherwise.
Performance points. Our main concern at this point in the course is that you can get the right answer.
However, we want to instill in you a sense of keeping things as short and simple as you can. Fur-
thermore, some of the puzzles can be solved by brute force, but we want you to be more clever. Thus,
for each function we’ve established a maximum number of operators that you are allowed to use for

Datalab 3 March 22, 2013

each function. This limit is very generous and is designed only to catch egregiously inefficient solutions.
You will receive two points for each correct function that satisfies the operator limit.
Style points. Finally, we’ve reserved 5 points for a subjective evaluation of the style of your solutions and
your commenting. Your solutions should be as clean and straightforward as possible. Your comments
should be informative, but they need not be extensive.

6. Autograding your work

We have included some autograding tools in the handout directory — btest, dlc, and driver.pl
— to help you check the correctness of your work.
• btest: This program checks the functional correctness of the functions in bits.c. To build
and use it, type the following two commands:
linux> make
linux> ./btest
Notice that you must rebuild btest each time you modify your bits.c file.
You’ll find it helpful to work through the functions one at a time, testing each one as you go.
You can use the -f flag to instruct btest to test only a single function:
linux> ./btest -f bitAnd
You can feed it specific function arguments using the option flags -1, -2, and -3:
linux> ./btest -f bitAnd -1 7 -2 0xf
Check the file README for documentation on running the btest program.
• dlc: This is a modified version of an ANSI C compiler from the MIT CILK group that you
can use to check for compliance with the coding rules for each puzzle. The typical usage is:
linux> ./dlc bits.c
The program runs silently unless it detects a problem, such as an illegal operator, too many
operators, or non-straightline code in the integer puzzles. Running with the -e switch:
linux> ./dlc -e bits.c
causes dlc to print counts of the number of operators used by each function. Type
./dlc -help
for a list of command line options.
• driver.pl: This is a driver program that uses btest and dlc to compute the correctness
and performance points for your solution. Your instructors will use driver.pl to evaluate
your solution.
Note: You can edit, compile, and run btest and bits.c on any Linux platform. However, the
executable compiler dlc and the PERL script driver.pl are platform specific. Therefore, we
provided two — one for a generic 32-bit Linux system compiled using gcc 4.6.2 and one for the

Datalab 4 March 22, 2013

CCC systems compiled using gcc 4.1.2. 1 You may, of course, move your bits.c back and forth
across platforms and get the same results.

7. Turnin Instructions
Please submit the file bits.c using the web-based Turnin system. This project is called Datalab. The
Turnin system can be accessed at the following URL:–
https://turnin.cs.wpi.edu:8088/

8. Advice
• Don’t include the <stdio.h> header file in your bits.c file, as it confuses dlc and results in some
non-intuitive error messages. You will still be able to use printf in your bits.c file for debugging
without including the <stdio.h> header, although gcc will print a warning that you can ignore.
• The dlc program enforces a stricter form of C declarations than is the case for C++ or that is enforced
by gcc. In particular, any declaration must appear in a block (what you enclose in curly braces) before
any statement that is not a declaration. For example, it will complain about the following code:

int foo(int x)
{
int a = x;
a *= 3; /* Statement that is not a declaration */
int b = a; /* ERROR: Declaration not allowed here */
}

9. The “Beat the Prof” Contest 2

For fun, we’re offering an optional “Beat the Prof” contest that allows you to compete with other
students and the instructor to develop the most efficient puzzles. The goal is to solve each Data Lab
puzzle using the fewest number of operators. Students who match or beat the instructor’s operator
count for each puzzle are winners!
To submit your entry to the contest, type:
linux> ./driver.pl -u "Your_Nickname"
Nicknames are limited to 35 characters and can contain alphanumerics, apostrophes, commas, periods,
dashes, underscores, and ampersands. You can submit as often as you like. Your most recent sub-
mission will appear on a real-time scoreboard, identified only by your nickname. You can view the
scoreboard by pointing your browser at
http://cs2011.cs.wpi.edu:8081

1 The difference is in the versions of the libraries that they link to.
2 Check with the Professor as to whether the “Beat the Prof” contest server is actually working.

Datalab 5 March 22, 2013