CS372: Introduction to Operating Systems

Fall 2003

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The crosscutting theme in this course is providing abstractions above imperfect hardware to make it usable by programmers and users. At the end of the course, students should understand a set of abstractions (concurrent programming, virtual addressing, memory protection, caching, transactions, ...) that are useful in many large-scale software systems not just OS kernels. More important than memorizing specific abstractions used in operating systems of the past, students should understand these abstractions well enough to synthesize their own abstractions when faced with new problems.

Another important goal of the course is for students to understand the computers they use and on which they build their applications. A student graduating with a CS degree should believe "there is no magic": they should be able to describe the chain of events that occurs when they hit a key and cause a letter to appear on the screen from the register level (or logical gate level or transistor level) to the system architecture level to the operating system level to the application level. This is philosophically important, but it is also of practical interest to developers who need to figure out how to make a system do what they want it to do.

Readings

Textbook:

Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Galvin, Greg Gagne, Operating Systems Concepts, 6th edition (The 5th edition is OK)

Other useful books:

Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language, Second Edition.

William Stallings, Operating System Internals and Design Principles, fourth edition.

Assorted C++ and Unix references