Syllabus: Operating Systems

CS 377 Operating Systems (Fall 2001)

Course Materials

Course Web page: http://www.cs.umass.edu/~shenoy/courses/377
Lecture notes: Lecure notes will be handed out in each class. If you miss a class, you may pick them up from the main office or use the online version. The most up-to-date version of the course schedule, syllabus (which is subject to change), all lecture notes, homeworks and labs will be available from the course web page.
Text: Applied Operating System Concepts, 1st ed. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne, John Wiley Publishers

The following materials will be on Reserve in the Physical Sciences Library: (A complete list is available here)
- Silberschatz, Galvin, Gagne, Applied Operating Systems Concepts, 1st ed
- Silberschatz and Galvin, Operating System Concepts, 5th ed
- Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems
- Assorted Java and Unix references

Description

This course will provide an introduction to operating system design and implementation. The operating system provides a well-known, convenient, and efficient interface between user programs and the bare hardware of the computer on which they run. The operating system is responsible for allowing resources (e.g., disks, networks, and processors) to be shared, providing common services needed by many different programs (e.g., file service, the ability to start or stop processes, and access to the printer), and protecting individual programs from one another.

The course will start with a brief historical perspective of the evolution of operating systems over the last fifty years, and then cover the major components of most operating systems. This discussion will cover the tradeoffs that can be made between performance and functionality during the design and implementation of an operating system. Particular emphasis will be given to three major OS subsystems: process management (processes, threads, CPU scheduling, synchronization, and deadlock), memory management (segmentation, paging, swapping), file systems, and operating system support for distributed systems.

Prerequisites

CMPSCI 187: Programming with Data Structures, and CMPSCI 201: Architecture & Assembly Language, or equivalent.

Requirements and Grading

6 Homeworks & Several Pop Quizes (20%)
3 Programming Projects in Java (40%)
3 Exams (40%)
- Exam 1: first 1/3 of course
- Exam 2: second 1/3 of course
- Final Exam: 50% on final 1/3 of course and 50% over first 2/3s of course

You are expected to attend class regularly, read the assigned reading before class, and participate in class discussions. The course will be graded on a curve.

Late Policies

This course covers a lot of material and late assignments will seriously impact your ability to learn the next section of the course. Late programming assignments will be penalized 10\% per day, up to 4 days. Late homeworks will not be accepted (no exceptions). Please try to finish your assignments and homeworks on time.

Cooperation and Cheating

Feel free to discuss homework and labs with other members of the class, myself, or the TA. However, do not look at or copy another students solution to a homework or lab. I am not concerned with how you come to understand the problem and how to solve it, but once you have the background necessary to solve it, you must provide your own solution. Exchanging homework or lab solutions is cheating and will be reported to the University, and you will lose credit for the course.

Copyright notice: Many of the materials created for this course are the intellectual property of the instructor. This includes, but is not limited to, the syllabus, lectures and course notes. Except to the extent not protected by copyright law, any use, distribution or sale of such materials requires the permission of the instructor. Please be aware that it is a violation of university policy to reproduce, for distribution or sale, class lectures or class notes, unless copyright has been explicity waived by the faculty member.

This page is online at http://www.cs.umass.edu/~shenoy/courses/377/syllabus.html

Prashant Shenoy

Last modified: Tue Sep 4 13:49:35 EDT 2001