CS414

CS414: Operating System Concepts

Course Overview. This course covers the basic topics of operation systems, including process scheduling, concurrency and synchronization, memory management, file systems, protection and security, and distributed systems. The goal of this course is to expose students to the underlying principles of system design and to help students gain some experience with system programming. Although operating system principles are the focus of the course, the techniques, issues, and insights covered in the course can be more generally applied to any future system design.

Course URL: http://courses.cs.cornell.edu/cs414/2001su/

Lecture: Attendance is expected.: 10:00am - 11:15am Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Upson 211.

Instructor:

Dr. Lidong Zhou (255-9202)
4116 Upson Hall
Office hours: 2:00pm - 3:00pm Mondays and Thursdays,

or by appointment through e-mail.
E-mail: ldzhou@cs.cornell.edu.

To schedule an appointment for any other time, please send e-mail and propose the time to meet. Please refrain from asking questions in e-mail. In-person discussions are more effective and are thus encouraged.

TA:

Venugopalan Ramasubramanian (Rama)

5154 Upson Hall

Office hours: 2:00pm - 3:00pm Tuesdays

3:00pm - 4:00pm Wednesdays

E-mail: ramasv@cs.cornell.edu

Prerequisites. The course is open to any student who has mastered the material in CS314 (Computer Architecture) and has had some exposure to data structures and programming languages (e.g., Pascal, C, C++, or JAVA), which can be obtained through CS211, CS212, or CS312. Talk to the instructor if you are not sure whether you meet the prerequisites.

Required Textbook:

Abraham Silberschatz and Peter Baer Galvin. Operating System Concepts, 5th Edition, Addison-Wesley, 1998. Errata of the book is available at http://www.bell-labs.com/topic/books/os-book/errata-dir/index.html.

Assignments and Grading. There will be reading, written, and programming assignments for this course. It is highly recommended that you type your solutions for written assignments. Hand-written solutions are often illegible. Students work in groups of two on programming assignments.

Final course grades will be computed as follows:

Homework (40%).
Midterm Exam (20%).
Final Exam (30%).
Subjective factors, including, for example, class participation and responses to optional bonus questions in homework assignments. (10%).

All assignments are due on the date stipulated. No late assignments will be accepted.

Academic Integrity. The code of academic integrity will be strictly enforced in this course. For written assignments, students are allowed to discuss with each other, but students should not, under any circumstances, cooperate on the actual writing of the solutions. Any written homework a student submits in this course should represents his/her individual work. Any collaboration, outside assistance (including solution sets posted on the web), or citation should be properly acknowledged. For programming assignments, students work in groups of two. While collaborations within each group is warranted, no inter-group collaborations are allowed.

Violation of the Academic Integrity Code could result in failure in the course, suspension, or expulsion from the university. If you have any question concerning academic integrity, ask the instructor or consult the official Cornell University code of academic integrity at http://www.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html. No claims of ignorance or misunderstanding of the rules will be accepted.