CSE 120: Principles of Computer Operating Systems

Fall 2018

Instructor

Yuanyuan Zhou (yyzhou@eng.ucsd.edu)

Lectures

1st Session: Tu/Th 11:00am-12:20pm. Center 109
2nd Session: Tu/Th 12:30-1:50pm Center 109
Final Exam Session A: 12/12, 2018, Wed. 11:30am-2:29pm, Center Hall 109
Final Exam Session B: 12/14, 2018, Fri. 11:30am-2:29pm, Center Hall 109
Shortcut to Class Schedule

Discussion Sections

Mon 5–5:50pm in Center Hall 109
Mon 6–6:50pm in Center Hall 109

Teaching Assistants

Bingyu Shen (byshen@eng.ucsd.edu)
Yudong Wu (yuw466@eng.ucsd.edu)
Vasudev Patel (vap014@ucsd.edu)
Zhiyao Yan (zhy038@ucsd.edu)

Tutors

Gustavo Umbelino (gumbelin@ucsd.edu)
Ruohan Hu (r8hu@ucsd.edu)
Weichen Liu (wel008@ucsd.edu)
Aldo Sevada Gragori Malkhassian (asmalkha@ucsd.edu)
Andrew B. Yoo (abyoo@ucsd.edu)
Yi Hui Chen (yhc001@ucsd.edu)

Office and Lab Hours

Prof Zhou: Tu/Th. 9:45-10:45am (CSE 3210)
Full TA and Tutor Lab Hour Schedule

Labs

CSE basement

Textbook

Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces Version 0.91   (Available free online! You can also click the chapters in the schedule below)

Discussion Board

Piazza

Course Objectives

This course covers the principles of operating systems. It emphasizes the basic concepts of OS kernel organization and structure, processes and threads, concurrency and synchronization, memory management, file systems, and communication. It is also a project course, providing essential experience in programming with concurrency, implementing and unmasking abstractions, working within an existing complex system, and collaborating with other students in a group effort.

Course Organization

The course is organized as a series of lectures by the instructor, discussion sections by the TAs, reading, homework, and project assignments, and exams:

• Lectures: The lectures present the core of the material.
• Sections: The discussion sections are given by the TAs to answer questions about the lecture, textbook readings, homework assignments, and project assignments.
• Readings: The readings in the textbook provide preparation and a reference for the lectures. Note, however, that they are not a substitute for the lectures.
• Homeworks: There are approximately four homework assignments with questions taken from the textbook and other materials. The homework assignments reinforce the readings and lectures.
• Projects: There are three programming projects, all using the Nachos instructional operating system.
• Exams: There are two exams, a midterm exam in the middle of the quarter and a final exam at the end of the quarter. The exams will cover the material presented in lecture, the homeworks, and the projects.

Homework

The course will have roughly four homeworks. I will post them as the quarter progresses. 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.

Homeworks are due at the beginning of class (1st session) on the day specified. We will reduce homework grades by 20% for each day that they are late (end of class is considered late).

• Homework 1 (Out 10/2, In 10/11)  
• Homework 2 (Out 10/11, In 10/26)  
• Homework 3 (Out 11/1, In 11/15)  
• Homework 4 (Out 11/15, In 12/6)  

I encourage you to collaborate on the homeworks: You can learn a lot from your fellow students. Collaboration consists of discussing problems with other students and independently writing your own answers to the problems based upon those discussions. As a rule of thumb, you should be able to discuss a homework problem in the hall with others, go home, and then write up your answer to the problem on your own. Do not copy from the answers by other students, copy from past homeworks and/or solutions from previous versions of the class, copy from solutions on the Web, etc.

Projects

The course has one tutorial project and three programming projects using the Nachos instructional operating system. We will be coordinating the projects across both sections of CSE 120 this quarter:

Project page

Exams

• Sample Midterm [Solutions]
• Sample Final [Solutions]

Discussion Sections

Discussion sections answer questions about the lectures, homeworks, projects, and programming environment. They may also supplement the lectures with additional material.

Grading

Your grade for the course will be based on your performance on the homeworks, midterm and final exams, and the three projects using the following weights:

• Homeworks: 6%
• Midterm: 28%
• Final: 33%
• Projects: 33%

The academic honesty guidelines outlined by Charles Elkan apply to this course. I urge you to resist any temptation to cheat, no matter how desperate the situation may seem. If you are in circumstances that you feel compel you to cheat, come to me first before you do so.

Course Schedule (Tentative)

The following table outlines the schedule for the course. We will update it as the quarter progresses.

Lecture slides will be available in Piazza under resources.

Supplemental Reading

• 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 Structuring Concept, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 17, No. 10, October, 1974, pp. 549-557.

• Practical guides to programming with threads on Unix:

  Blaise Barney, POSIX Threads Programming, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

  Andrew D. Birrell, An Introduction to Programming with Threads, DEC SRC Research Report 35, January 6, 1989.