CS 5523: Operating Systems
Syllabus for Spring 2010

Disclaimer:

"This Syllabus is provided for informational purposes regarding the anticipated course content and schedule of this course. It is based upon the most recent information available on the date of its issuance and is as accurate and complete as possible. I reserve the right to make any changes I deem necessary and/or appropriate. I will make my best efforts to communicate any changes in the syllabus in a timely manner. Students are responsible for being aware of these changes."

General Information

Course Description

This course covers the principles of operating systems theory and practice as well as distributed operating systems. Fundamental concepts such as processes/threads, synchronization/concurrency, memory management, communication,  remote method invocation, security, distributed file systems and name services will be presented. The principles and implementation of the software necessary to manage system resources in a distributed environment will also be addressed. A core knowledge of basic operating systems concepts, such as process/IPC, virtual memory and I/O, are assumed and will be reviewed. You will be programming in C/C++ and/or Java.

Prerequisites:

• CS 3733 or equivalent: Undergraduate operating systems
• CS 4753 or equivalent: Undergraduate architecture
• Graduate standing
• In order to be able to work on the programming projects, the students must be comfortable with Java and C/C++ programming languages;
• If you have not met ALL of these prerequisites, please talk to the instructor.

Textbook and Readings:

• Required textbook: Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms, 2nd edition. by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Maarten Van Steen (TS); ISBN: 0-13-239227-5

• Recommended for reference: Operating System Concepts, by Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne (SGG); ISBN: 0-471-69466-5

• Recommended for reference: Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design 4th ed. by G. Coulouris, J. Dollimore and T. Kindberg (CDK); ISBN: 0-321-26354-5

Course Objectives:

• Enhance the understanding for the key operating system concepts (such as process, thread and memory management);
• Develop an understanding of distributed systems and the important issues in their design;
• Develop a working knowledge of the infrastructure required to support distributed systems (inter-process communication and internetworking);
• Understand how applications are evolving to use distributed system support;
• Improve system-development skills;
• Improve technical writing skill;
• Learn and/or improve team work and oral discussion skills;

Topics:

• Process and memory management:      SGG Chapters 3, 5, 8 and 9
• Thread and synchronization          TS Chapter 3 and 6,  and SGG Chapters 4, 6 and 7
• Distributed System Models:          TS Chapters 1 and 2
• Networks and Communication:         TS Chapter 4 and CDK Chapters 3 and 4
• Distributed Objects:                TS Chapter 10 and CDK Chapter 5
• Name Services:                      TS Chapter 5
• Fault Tolerance:                    TS Chapter 8
• Security:                           TS Chapter 9
• Distributed File Systems:           TS Chapter 11

Grading

• 15% first Midterm examination
• 15% second Midterm examination
• 30% Final examination (comprehensive)
• 40% Project assignments (you are expected to demonstrate your projects upon requests)
• No early and makeup exams will be given except with university sanctioned excuses.
• No late submission of projects will be accepted except with prior instructor consent.
• Reading the material prior to class and participation in the class discussion is highly encouraged.
• Assignment for the final letter grade will base on the following ranges:
  • A: >= 95%
  • B: >= 80%
  • C: >=70%
  • D: >=60%
  • F: <60%
• The students are supposed to work individually on the assignments/projects unless for group projects. MOSS may be to detect plagiarism if necessary.
• Violations of  Student Honor Code (such as copying programming codes and cheating) will automatically result in an F.

Last updated by Dakai Zhu, 10/02/2009 10:21:15 PM