CSE 120: Principles of Operating Systems (Fall 09)

Instructor: Joseph Pasquale (office hours: Thu 2:30-3:30 or by appt, EBU3B 3112)
Teaching Assistant: Cynthia Taylor (office hours: Mon 3-4, Thu 3-4, EBU3B 250A)

Lectures: Tue/Thu 12:30-1:50, HSS 1330
Discussion: Wed 2:00-2:50, HSS 1330

Description

This is an introductory course on the principles of operating systems. Topics include processes, scheduling, synchronization, memory management, virtual memory, file systems, I/O, protection, security, networking, and distributed systems. There is a significant systems programming component to the course, where students are required to design and implement some basic kernel functions (context switching, scheduling, synchronization) and a user-level thread package. The course is organized of the following:

Lectures: the lectures comprise the core material, and are based on the instructor's lecture notes that are provided to the students
Discussion: the discussion sections are led by the TA, and may be organized as discussions on specific topics or question/answer sessions
Readings: the readings in the textbook supplement the lecture notes
Labs: there are four lab programming assignments (in C) using Umix, a Unix-based user-mode operating system
Exams: there is a midterm exam and a final exam (both closed-book) covering the material in the lectures and the labs

Messages

The final exam is at 11:30am-2:30pm on Friday, Dec. 11.
12/6: Here is a practice final.
12/1: For those of you planning for winter quarter classes, I strongly encourage you to consider taking CSE 121 "Operating Systems: Architecture and Implementation". You will get more in-depth coverage of the material we covered in CSE 120, and it is being taught by Prof. Alex Snoeren, who is an excellent teacher.

Lectures

Sep 24: Introduction Lecture 1 ... (single)
Sep 29: Processes Lecture 2 ... (single)
Oct 1: Scheduling Lecture 3 ... (single)
Oct 6: Synchronization Lecture 4 ... (single)
Oct 8: Interprocess Communication Lecture 5 ... (single)
Oct 13: Deadlock Lecture 6 ... (single)
Oct 20: Memory Management Lecture 7 ... (single)
Oct 22: Logical Memory Lecture 8 ... (single) (UPDATED 11/11)
Oct 27: NO LECTURE (Midterm exam)
Oct 29: Virtual Memory Lecture 9 ... (single)
Nov 3: Resident Set Management Lecture 10 ... (single)
Nov 5: File System Design Lecture 11 ... (single)
Nov 10: File System Implementation Lecture 12 ... (single)
Nov 12: Input/Output System Lecture 13 ... (single)
Nov 17: Protection: Lecture 14 ... (single)
Nov 19: Security: Lecture 15 ... (single)
Nov 24: Networks: Lecture 16 ... (single)
Dec 1: Distributed Systems: Lecture 17 ... (single)

Programming Assignments

PA1: Context Switching, due Sunday, Oct 4 at 10:00pm - completed
PA2: Scheduling, due Sunday, Oct 18 at 10pm - completed
PA3: Synchronization, due Sunday Nov 8 at 10:00pm - completed
PA4: Threads, due Sunday Dec 6 at 10:00pm. - completed

Late Policy: No programming assignments will be accepted beyond the deadline - no exceptions.

Grading

40% Final exam (Dec 11, 11:30am-2:30pm)
30% Midterm exam (Oct 27, in class)
30% Programming assignments (four, each worth progressively more points: 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%)

References

Lecture notes (made available the night before each lecture, see below)
Textbook: Operating System Concepts, 8th Ed., by Silberschatz, Galvin, Gagne; Wiley, 2008

Resources

Discussion board: WebCT
Grade postings: GradeSource