Syllabus: Fall 2026		Credit hours: 3
Class times: 10:10am – 11:00am, MoWeFr		Classroom: Harrington Hall 108
Class # (on-campus: 250-01): 36013		Class # (on-line: 250-02): 36014
Prerequisite: CSCI 160 Computer Science I
Instructor: Wen-Chen Hu   (my teaching philosophy)	Office: Upson II 366K
Office hours: 12:30pm – 02:00pm, MoWeFr	✉ Email: wenchen@cs.und.edu
: https://und.zoom.us/j/2489867333	UND Zoom sign in: https://und.zoom.us
TA: Bruno Fonkeng	Office: Harrington Hall 221
: https://und.zoom.us/j/4569996871	✉ Email: bruno.fonkeng@und.edu
Office hours: 09:00am – 10:30am, TuTh	☎ Phone #: (701) 777-9355

Synchronous class delivery: The class lectures will be delivered synchronously via https://und.zoom.us/j/2489867333, and the Zoom video will be posted on the Blackboard afterwards. Students can watch the video clips anytime they want.

Textbook (recommended): Assembly Language for x86 Processors, 8^th ed., Kip Irvine, Pearson, ISBN: 978-0135381656

Lecture notes: Other than the textbook, award-winning, interactive, complementary, and abridged lecture notes (based on the textbook and other online documents and user manuals) and detailed and precise class instructions will be provided. Collectively, the lecture notes and instructions are more like a small book, which supplies much more information than regular notes do and makes the subject studies much easier. Students will not have problem learning the subjects or taking the exams after studying them and doing the homeworks and programming exercises.

---

Grading: Grade information Programming exercise guidelines Examination rules and guidelines

---

Announcements:

• Updated constantly: Class notes


• Monday, October 19 (soft): Programming Exercise I due
• Wednesday, September 09: Programming Exercise I posted
• Monday, August 24: Register this course via Course Registration.

---

Tentative Schedule:

Week	Class	Topic	Due	Where
0		0. Computer Career and Data Research & Technologies
		0.1 A computer career
		0.2 Data research
		0.3 Data technologies
1	08/26 08/28	1. Introduction to CSCI 250
		1.1 Course outline
		1.2 Programming language generations
		1.3 A language processing system
2	08/31 09/02 09/04	2. Introducation to Assembly Languages
		2.1 MASM
		2.2 ARM
		2.3 MIPS
	09/02	Last day to add a course or drop without record — 100% refund  Last day to add audit or change to/from audit  Last day to receive a refund on a dropped class  Drops after the last day to add will appear on a transcript.
3	09/09 09/11	3. Programming Exercise I
		3.1 Specifications
		3.2 Construction steps
		3.3 A sample program
	09/07	Holiday, Labor Day (Monday) — no classes
4	09/14 09/16 09/18	4. Computer Data Representation
		4.1 Integers
		4.2 Two’s complement notation
		4.3 Character storage
5	09/21 09/23 09/25	5. MASM Data Representation
		5.1 Intrinsic data types
		5.2 Defining data
		5.3 Little endian order
6	09/28 09/30 10/02	6. Data Transfers
		6.1 Data transfer instructions
		6.2 MOV instructions
		6.3 Load and store instructions
7	10/05 10/09	7. Arithmetic
		7.1 Arithmetic instructions
		7.2 Arithmetic expressions
		7.3 Status flags
	10/07 (no class)	Exam I (for both on-campus and on-line students; 6:30pm – 8:30pm, Wednesday)
8	10/12 10/14 10/16	8. Multiplication and Division
		8.1 Multiplication
		8.2 Division
		8.3 Arithmetic expressions
9	10/19 10/21 10/23	9. MASM Miscellaneous Instructions
		9.1 Data-related operators	EX I
		9.2 Memory addressing
		9.3 Other miscellaneous instructions
10	10/28 10/30	10. The Link Library from Irvine
		10.1 Input functions
		10.2 Output functions
		10.3 Other miscellaneous functions
	10/26	IEEE CARS 2026 Symposium (Monday) — no classes
11	11/02 11/04 11/06	11. Conditional Processing
		11.1 Boolean instructions
		11.2 AND instructions
		11.3 NOT instructions
12	11/09 11/13	12. Conditional Processing (Cont.)
		12.1 LOOP instructions
		12.2 Decision directives
		12.3 .WHILE directive
	11/13	Last day to change to or from S/U grading  Last day to change to or from audit grading  Last day to drop a full-term course or withdraw from school
	11/11	Holiday, Veteran’s (Wednesday) — no classes
13	11/16 11/20	13. Procedures
		13.1 The runtime stack
		13.2 PUSH and POP instructions
		13.3 Defining and using procedures
	11/18 (no class)	Exam II (for both on-campus and on-line students; 6:30pm – 8:30pm, Wednesday)
14	11/23	14. Advanced Procedures
		14.1 Local variables
		14.2 INVOKE directive
		14.3 PROC directive
	11/25 11/26 11/27	Holiday, Thanksgiving Break (MoWeFr) — no classes
15	11/30 12/02 12/04	15. High-Level Language Interface
		15.1 Inline assembly code	EX II
		15.2 Linking to C/C++
		15.3 Calling C/C++ functions
16	12/07 12/09	16. Shift and Rotate Instructions
		16.1 SAL/SHL instruction
		16.2 SAR/SHR instruction
		16.3 ROR instruction
17	12/16	Final exam (for both on-campus and on-line students; 06:30pm – 08:30pm, Wednesday)
18	12/22	Grades posted before noon, Tuesday

Instructor’s qualification: The instructor has been teaching assembly language for more than 20 years. In addition, he designed and implemented a POPLOG virtual machine for which both LISP and PROLOG compilers generate assembly code.

University of North Dakota Course Description (CSCI 250) —
Introduction to machine language and assembly language programming. Concepts of assembly language and the machine representation of instructions and data of a modern digital computer are presented. Requires students to practice assembly language programming techniques on ARM and Intel x86 architectures.

Assembly Language from webopedia.com —
Assembly language is once removed from a computer’s machine language. Machine languages consist entirely of numbers and are almost impossible for humans to read and write. Assembly languages have the same structure and set of commands as machine languages, but they enable programmers to use names instead of numbers. Each type of CPU has its own machine language and assembly language, so an assembly language program written for one type of CPU will not run on another. In the early days of programming, all programs were written in assembly language. Now, most programs are written in a high-level language such as FORTRAN or C. Programmers still use assembly language when speed is essential or when they need to perform an operation that isn’t possible in a high-level language.

An Assemble-Link-Execute Cycle —


Computer Hardware —