CSE 120: Principles of Operating Systems (Winter 2012)

Instructor: Joseph Pasquale (office hours: Mon 12:30-2:30 or by appt, EBU3B 3112)

Teaching Assistant: Kevin Webb (half time) (office hours in EBU3B B240A: Mon 4:00PM-5:00PM, Thu 4:00PM-5:00PM)
Teaching Assistant: Raja Altenhoff (half time) (office hours in EBU3B B240A: Thu 9:00AM-11:00AM)
Teaching Assistant: Vineet Kumar (office hours in EBU3b B240A: Wed 4:00PM-6:00PM, Fri noon-2:00PM)
Teaching Assistant: Vivek Ramavajjala (office hours in EBU3B B240A: Mon 11:00AM-1:00PM, Tue 9:00AM-11:00AM)

Lectures: Tue/Thu 2:00-3:20, PCYNH 106
Discussion: Wed 1:00-1:50, CSB 001
Discussion: Mon 3:00-3:50, CSB 002 (corrected)

Messages

The course is completed. Best wishes with your future studies at UCSD.
Final grades have been submitted. You'll be able to access them the standard way via the registrar. You will be able to view your final exams at the beginning of spring quarter, where they will be available in the undergraduate office.

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

Lectures

The notes for each lecture will be posted here one day prior to that lecture's class.

Jan 10: Introduction
Jan 12: Processes
Jan 17, 19: Scheduling
Jan 24, 26: Synchronization
Jan 26: Interprocess Communication
Jan 31, Feb 2: Deadlock
Feb 2, Feb 7: Memory Management
Feb 9: Logical Memory
Feb 14: Midterm - no lecture
Feb 16: Virtual Memory
Feb 21: Virtual Memory cont'
Feb 23: File System Design
Feb 28: File System Implementation
Mar 1: Input/Output System
Mar 6: Protection
Mar 8: Networks
Mar 13: Networks cont'
Mar 15: Distributed Systems & Security

Programming Assignments

PA1: Context Switching, due Sunday, Jan 22 at 10:00pm
PA2: Scheduling, due Sunday, Feb 5 at 10pm
PA3: Synchronization, due Sunday Feb 26 at 10:00pm
PA4: Threads, due Sunday Mar 18 at 10:00pm.
Late Policy: No programming assignments will be accepted beyond the deadline - no exceptions.

Grading

30% Midterm exam (Tues, Feb 14)
40% Final exam (Thur, Mar 22, 3:00pm-6:00pm)
30% Programming assignments (four, each worth progressively more points: 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%)

References

Lecture notes (available on this page, see above)
Textbook: Operating System Concepts, 8th Ed., by Silberschatz, Galvin, Gagne; Wiley, 2008

Resources

Discussion board: Ted (WebCT)
Grade postings: GradeSource