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Course Objectives

Prerequisites

Approach

Typical Text

Course Outline

Course Objectives
To examine in depth some of the major topics in operating systems. To introduce some of the recent innovations in operating systems as illustrated in research operating systems and in the research literature.

Prerequisites
COMP 633, 723.

Approach
A combination of lectures, discussion of research papers, and programming assignments, including a substantial programming project, in the implementation of operating system components and services.

Typical Text
Selected papers from the literature.

Course Outline
Numbers in parentheses indicate approximate number of weeks

• Fixed Core (9.5)
  • Concurrent Programming
    • Synchronization and communication paradigms: synchronous v. asynchronous, procedure call v. message passing.
    • Formal verification; safety, liveness.

  • Performance Evaluation
    • Operational and stochastic analysis with queuing network models.

  • Virtual Memory
    • Page replacement algorithms.
    • Performance evaluation.
    • Code and data sharing.
    • Integration with inter-process communication.
    • Object-oriented memory management.

  • Distributed Operating Systems
    • Client server model.
    • Remote procedure call.

  • Protection and Security
    • Lattice models.
    • Introduction to authentication protocols.

  Optional (but recommended) Material (3.5 weeks)
  (May also include expanded coverage of the topics in the fixed core.)

• Systems Survey
  • Aspects of the design and implementation of influential systems such as Multics, Sprite, Accent/Mach, V.

• Transactions and Concurrency Control
  • Locking protocols, serializability, undo, recovery.

• Multiprocessor Operating Systems
  • Inter-process communication.
  • Processor scheduling.
  • Memory management.

• Real-Time Systems
  • Timing constraints and workload characterizations.
  • Scheduling and resource allocation.
  • Software architectures.