Advanced Operating Systems Course, Winter 2009/2010

Prof. Kirsch, Department of Computer Sciences, University of Salzburg


Time, Location: Tue 10-12 (VO), Th 3-4 (PS) in T02, Techno-Z. First lecture on Tue, Oct 6, 10-12. Check schedule (iCal) for updates.

Brief Overview:

This course covers advanced topics in operating systems. It begins with a quick review of some basic operating system concepts such as processes and threads, IPC, memory management, input/output, file systems, and multiple processor systems. After around 3-4 weeks of lectures, the remainder of the course will be held interactively similar to a seminar. Each Tuesday lecture will present a research paper on an advanced topic in operating systems. The students will be encouraged to discuss and analyze its content and context in class. There will be a final exam at the end of the semester that will involve reviewing a given research paper. There are biweekly hands-on homework assignments that involve implementing basic operating system concepts. The assignments will be discussed in the Thursday lectures.

Goals of the course:

Learn, through interactive lectures, how to approach advanced topics in operating systems. Learn, through biweekly hands-on homework assignments, how concurrency support, memory management, device abstraction, and file handling actually works.

Assignments:

  • There will be biweekly hands-on homework assignments.

Final exam:

  • There will be a final exam at the end of the semester.

Some introductory material:

  • Andrew S. Tanenbaum: Modern Operating Systems. Prentice Hall, 3rd Edition, 2008.
  • Lubomir F. Bic, Alan C. Shaw: Operating Systems Principles. Prentice Hall, 2003.
  • William Stallings: Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles. Prentice Hall, 4th Edition, 2002.
Web sources:


Grading: homework and final exam.

Prerequisites: programming experience, basic knowledge of operating system concepts.

Technical contact: Harald . Roeck @ cs . uni-salzburg . at
Administrative contact: Petra . Kirchweger @ cs . uni-salzburg . at