Your lab write up can be short and sweet, but it should be English.
You should communicate everything you did at some level of detail, but
for the uninteresting parts, you can summarize in broad outline, while
for the more interesting parts, you can go into detail. Specific
details I will expect to see are the two programs you are asked to
write, and test data and results from those two programs. Make sure
your testing is systematic and thorough. Thorough doesn't mean using
large quantities of weird numbers that still only test the same cases;
rather, it means using carefully chosen tests to ensure that all
cases are covered and all likely bugs exposed, while still allowing
the answers to easily be hand-checked.
You can do this lab on either a an SGI or a Linux PC
(in OHS 326 or 329). You will use xspim, as described in Appendix A
of the book. To run it, you can also just type xspim
in a shell
window. Let me know if you have troubles with this or other
Unix/X-windows user interface stuff.
Start by stepping through simple programs, like one to add two numbers. This part of the lab is to make sure you are comfortable with SPIM.
Now you have two programs to write and test and debug (if necessary). You can do these in whichever order seems more natural for you.
Instructor: Max Hailperin