 | Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces Version 1.00 (Available free online!) |
Course Objectives
This course covers the principles of operating systems. Itemphasizes the basic concepts of OS kernel organization and structure,processes and threads, concurrency and synchronization, memorymanagement, file systems, and communication. It is also a projectcourse, providing essential experience in programming withconcurrency, implementing and unmasking abstractions, working withinan existing complex system, and collaborating with other students in agroup effort.
Course Schedule
The following table outlines the tentative schedule for the course. We willupdate it as the quarter progresses.
| Date | Lecture | Readings | Optional | Homework | Project |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3/31 | Course Intro | CH. 1, CH. 2 | HW 1: Out | PR 0: Out | |
| 4/2 | Interaction between hardware, OS, and applications | CH. 6 | |||
| 4/7 | Processes | CH. 4, CH. 5 | Linux context switch | ||
| 4/9 | Threads | CH. 26, CH. 27 | |||
| 4/14 | Synchronization | CH. 28, CH. 29 | HW 1: Due HW 2: Out | PR 1: Out PR 0: Due | |
| 4/16 | Semaphores | CH. 31 | |||
| 4/21 | Conditional Variables, Concurrency Bugs | CH. 30, CH. 32 | |||
| 4/23 | CPU Scheduling | CH. 7, CH. 8 | |||
| 4/25 | (Saturday) | HW 2: Due | |||
| 4/28 | Midterm Review | ||||
| 4/30 | Midterm Exam | ||||
| 5/5 | Memory Management Overview | CH. 15,CH. 16, | HW 3: Out | ||
| 5/7 | Paging | CH. 18,CH. 19,CH. 20 | PR 1: Due PR 2: Out | ||
| 5/12 | Swapping, Memory Allocation and Sharing | CH. 21, | |||
| 5/14 | Page Replacement | CH. 22, | |||
| 5/19 | Working Sets, Storage Devices | CH. 37, | |||
| 5/20 | (Wednesday) | HW 3: Due HW 4: Out | |||
| 5/21 | File System Interface and Layout | CH. 39,CH. 40 | |||
| 5/26 | File System Implementation | CH. 41 | |||
| 5/28 | File System Reliability | CH. 42 | |||
| 6/2 | Distributed Systems, Datacenters, and Clouds | CH. 48 | Berkeley View of Cloud Computing | PR 2: Due | |
| 6/3 | (Wednesday) | HW 4: Due | |||
| 6/4 | |||||
| 6/11 | Final Exam | 7pm - 10pm |
Course Organization
The course is organized as a series of lectures by the instructor,discussion sections by the TAs, reading, homework, and projectassignments, and exams:
- Lectures: The lectures present the core of the material.
- Sections: The discussion sections aregiven by the TAs to answer questions about the lecture, textbookreadings, homework assignments, and project assignments.
- Readings: The readings in the textbook provide preparationand a reference for the lectures. Note, however, that they arenot a substitute for the lectures.
- Homeworks: There are approximately four homework assignments withquestions taken from the textbook and other materials. The homework assignments reinforce the readings and lectures.
- Projects: There are two programming projects, all usingthe Nachos instructional operating system.
- Exams: There are two exams, a midterm exam in the middle ofthe quarter and a final exam at the end of the quarter. The examswill cover the material presented in lecture, the homeworks, and theprojects.
Homework
The course will have four homeworks. I will post them as the quarter progresses. You will submit all your homework electronically via Canvas. We will reduce homework grades by 20% for each day that they are late.
Due to extensive copying on homeworks in the past, I have changed how homeworks are graded. As long as you submit a technical answer related to the question, you will get full credit for the question. The goal of the homeworks is to give you practice learning the material. The homework questions both supplement and complement the material from lecture and in the project, and you will also find the homework questions to be useful for practicing for the exams. We will post solutions to all homeworks after they are submitted, and you can use them for studying as well. But, even with the solutions, the amount you learn from the homeworks will be directly correlated with your effort working on them.
I encourage you to collaborate on the homeworks: You can learn alot from your fellow students. Collaboration consists of discussingproblems with other students and independently writing your ownanswers to the problems based upon those discussions. As a rule ofthumb, you should be able to discuss a homework problem in the hallwith others, go home, and then write up your answer to the problem onyour own.
Projects
The course has one tutorial project and two programming projectsusing the Nachos instructional operating system.
- Project page
Exams
The course has two exams, a midterm and a final. The midterm willcover the first half of the class, and the final will cover thesecond half of the class.Discussion Sections
Discussion sections answer questions about the lectures,homeworks, projects, and programming environment. They may alsosupplement the lectures with additional material.
Grading
Your grade for the course will be based on your performance on thehomeworks, midterm, and (no-fault) final exams, and the three projects using thebetter letter-grade result of the following two calculations:
- Homeworks: 6%
- Midterm: 21%
- Projects: 50%
- Homeworks: 6%
- Midterm: 18%
- Final: 26%
- Projects: 50%
The academichonesty guidelines outlined by Charles Elkan apply to this course.I urge you to resist any temptation to cheat, no matter how desperatethe situation may seem. If you are in circ*mstances that you feelcompel you to cheat, come to me first before you do so.
Supplemental Reading
The supplemental readings include primary sources and in-depthsupplements for concepts in the class. Supplemental reading is foryour own interest — the readings are not required, nor will you betested on the material. Note that some of the links to the documentspoint to the ACM Digital Library. UCSD has a subscription to the ACMDigital Library, so you will need to use a web browser on campus toaccess them.- The seminal paper on semaphores:
E. W. Dijkstra, The Structure of the 'THE'-Multiprogramming System,Communications of the ACM, Vol. 11, No. 5, May 1968, pp. 341-346.
(Additional historical background on semaphores in Wikipedia)
- The seminal paper on Unix:
D. M. Ritchie and K. Thompson, The UNIX Time-Sharing System,Communications of the ACM, Vol. 17, No. 7, July 1974, pp. 365-375.
- The seminal paper on monitors:
C. A. R. Hoare, Monitors: An Operating System StructuringConcept, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 17, No. 10, October, 1974,pp. 549-557.
- Practical guides to programming with threads on Unix:
Blaise Barney, POSIX ThreadsProgramming, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Andrew D. Birrell, AnIntroduction to Programming with Threads, DEC SRC Research Report35, January 6, 1989.
yiying@ucsd.edu
