CSE 120: Principles of Computer Operating Systems

Winter 2007

Instructors

Keith Marzullo (marzullo@cs.ucsd.edu) CSE 2266 (858) 534-3729

Geoff Voelker (voelker@cs.ucsd.edu) CSE 3108 (858) 822-3323

Lectures

Section A00 Tue/Thu 6:30pm - 7:50pm Center Hall 113

Section B00 Tue/Thu 8am - 9:20am Warren Lecture Hall 2206

Teaching Assistants

Michael Vrable (mvrable@cs.ucsd.edu)

Jeremy Lau (jl@cs.ucsd.edu)

Discussion Sections

Section A01 Wed 10am Center Hall 105

Section B01 Wed 3pm Center Hall 109

Office Hours

Voelker: Mon 3-4pm, Wed 4-5pm (CSE 3108)
Marzullo: Tue and Fri 10am-11am (CSE 2266)
Lau: Mon 4-5pm, Thu 1-2pm (CSE B225)
Vrable: Tue 4-5pm, Thu 2-3pm (CSE B225)

Labs

CSE basement

Textbook

Silberschatz, Galvin, Gagne, Operating System Concepts, 7th Edition John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-69466-5

Class Mailing List

cse120@cs.ucsd.edu

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. The homework assignments are intended to 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. You can use both sides of one 8.5x11" page of notes to assist you during the exams.

Homework

Homeworks are due at the beginning of class on the day specified. We will reduce homework grades by 20% for each day that they are late (end of class is considered late). You must hand in a hardcopy of your homework; disagreements about the contents of emailed homeworks have caused too much grief in the past.

• Homework 1 (Out 1/11, In 1/18) [Solution]
• Homework 2 (Out 1/23, In 1/30) [Solution]
• Homework 3 (Out 1/30, In 2/6) [Solution]
• Homework 4 (Out 2/15, In 2/27) [Solution]
• Homework 5 (Out 3/8, In 3/15) [Solution]

I encourage you to collaborate on the homeworks: You can learn a lot from your fellow students. However, there can be a fine line between collaboration and cheating. 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 library with others, go home, and then write up your answer to the problem on your own. Cheating consists of looking at other student's homeworks and copying the answers, looking at past homeworks and/or solutions from previous versions of the class, searching on the Web, etc. The consequences of cheating will correspond to the severity (e.g., failure of the assignment, failure of the course). Cheating causes many problems for all of us -- don't do it, and save us all the grief.

The academic honesty guidelines outlined by Charles Elkan for CSE 130 apply to this course.

Projects

The course has one tutorial project and three programming projects using the Nachos instructional operating system. You will work in groups of at most four on each of the projects.

• CSE 120 Nachos Project Guide
• Project 0: Install
• Project 1: Threads
• Project 2: Multiprogramming and I/O
• Project 3: Virtual Memory

Exams

• Sample Midterm
• Sample Final

Discussion Sections

Discussion sections answer questions about the lectures, homeworks, projects, and programming environment. They also supplement the lectures with additional material. Notes, handouts, and slides from discussion section are at:

• Section A01 (Michael)
• Section B01 (Jeremy)

Although the supplemental material will not be tested on the exam, we believe you will find it another interesting part of the course.

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: 15%
• Midterm: 25%
• Final: 30%
• Projects: 30%

Course Schedule

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

Supplemental Reading

• The seminal paper on operating system structure and 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," The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 57, No. 6, July-August 1978, pp. 1905-1929.

• 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.

• A practical guide to programming with threads:

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