CS 416

198:416 sections 01, 02 -- CS 416: Operating System Design, Spring 2008

Lecture: MW 3:20pm-4:40pm at ARC-105, Busch Campus
Recitations:
Section 01 -- W 12:15pm-1:10pm at SEC-220, Busch Campus
Section 02 -- W 1:55pm-2:50pm at ARC-206, Busch Campus

Instructor: Ricardo Bianchini
Email: ricardob@cs.rutgers.edu
Office Hours: by appointment over email, CoRE 307.

TA: Rekha Bachwani
Email: rbachwan@cs.rutgers.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays 1:00pm-3:00pm

TA: Ana Paula Centeno
Email: anapaula@cs.rutgers.edu
Office Hours: Mondays 10:00am-noon

Announcements

05/04 -- The distributed systems lecture has been slightly modified.
04/23 -- Lecture on 4/28 (Monday) is cancelled.
04/23 -- The distributed systems lecture has been slightly modified.
04/16 -- The distributed systems lecture has been slightly modified.
04/08 -- Our final exam will be on May 14 from noon to 3pm at ARC-105. Closed book, closed notes. Please bring a photo id.
04/06 -- The file system lecture has been slightly modified.
04/02 -- The third assignment is now on-line here. Due date 04/29. Late hand-ins will not be accepted.
04/02 -- The file system lecture has been slightly modified.
03/31 -- The I/O and disk lectures have been slightly modified.
03/26 -- The I/O lecture has been slightly modified.
03/23 -- The memory management lecture has been slightly modified.
03/09 -- Slightly modified the review lecture.
02/29 -- The second assignment is now on-line here. Due date 03/30. Late hand-ins will not be accepted.
02/28 -- The midterm exam has been rescheduled to March 12 during the class time. Closed book, closed notes. Please bring a photo id.
02/26 -- The synchronization lecture has been slightly modified.
02/25 -- The synchronization lecture has been heavily modified.
02/25 -- Sample midterm.
02/20 -- CPU scheduling and synchronization lectures have been modified.
~~02/13 -- Midterm exam will take place on March 10 during the class time. Closed book, closed notes. Please bring a photo id.~~
02/13 -- CPU scheduling lecture has been modified.
02/10 -- Threads lecture has been modified.
02/06 -- The first assignment is now on-line here. Due date 02/26. Late hand-ins will not be accepted.
02/05 -- Processes lecture has been modified.
01/29 -- Introductory lecture notes have been modified.
01/23 -- The recitations will only start next week.
01/03 -- If you are interested in a special permission for one of my sections, please bring a copy of your transcript and a photo ID to the first lecture. The priority will be assigned according to the following categories. (Students in lower-numbered categories have higher priority.) 1 - Students with 105 credits or more; 2 - Students in CS major not repeating this course; 3 - Students in ECE major not repeating this course; 4 - Students in CS major repeating this course; 5 - Students in ECE major repeating this course; 6 - Other students.

Course Overview

CS 416 is a senior undergraduate course in operating systems. We will cover the basic concepts in operating systems, such as processes, threads, virtual memory, file systems, and communication protocols. If time permits, we will also cover a few interesting research topics, such as system support for scalable network servers. For the programming assignments, we will be using either C or C++.

This course is based on Rich Martin and Thu Nguyen's CS 416 course.

Pre-requisites

Students must have taken an undergraduate course in computer architecture (CS 211 or ECE 331) and an undergraduate course in software design/programming (CS 113 or CS 314 or ECE 252). The programming assignments require good programming skills and a lot of time and effort. Note that these requirements are very serious; you will not be able to keep up with this course's load, if you don't have the suggested background, programming skills, and time. Even if you do have the background and the skills, the course is very heavy on reading and programming assignments, so come very motivated!

Course Material

Text book: Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne. "Operating System Concepts" (seventh edition), John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2004
Web support for text book

Evaluation

30% midterm
30% homeworks and programming assignments
40% final exam

Programming Assignments

File systems. Due date 04/29. Late hand-ins will not be accepted.
Virtual memory mechanisms and policies. Due date 03/30. Late hand-ins will not be accepted.
Processes, threads, and synchronization. Due date 02/26. Late hand-ins will not be accepted.

Lecture Notes (will be changing slightly in the next few days)

Introduction (ppt,ps)
Chapters 1 and 2 (2.1-2.8)
Architecture refresher (ppt,ps)
Processes (ppt,ps)
Chapter 3 (except 3.6)
Threads (ppt,ps)
Chapter 4 (except 4.4)
Processor scheduling (ppt,ps)
Chapter 5 (except 5.7)
Synchronization (ppt,ps)
Chapters 6 (except 6.8) and 7
Virtual memory (ppt,ps)
Chapters 8 and 9
Review (ppt,ps)
Midterm
Answers to midterm
I/O (ppt,ps)
Chapter 13 (13.1-13.5)
Disk (ppt,ps)
Chapter 12 (14.1-14.8)
File Systems (ppt,ps)
Chapters 10 and 11 (11.1-11.7)
Support for Distributed Systems (ppt,ps)
Chapters 16, 17, 18, and 11 (11.9 only)
Review (ppt,ps)
Final

Cheating Policy

Exams and written homeworks in CS 416 must be strictly individual work. Programming assignments will be done in groups of 3 or 4 students. Collaboration with other groups on programming assignments is encouraged at the level of ideas. Feel free to ask each other questions, brainstorm on algorithms, or work together at a blackboard. You should not, however, copy the actual code for programming assignments, or copy the wording for written homeworks. This will be considered cheating and will be punished severely! For more details on the CS department's cheating policy, please go to this page.