COM 1330 Operating Systems

Course Format
Course Coordinator
Textbooks and References

Prerequisites by Topic
Major Topics Covered in Course
Laboratory Projects

Course Description

Introduces the basic concepts underlying computer operating systems and provides hands-on experience with their implementation.  Covers the basic structure of an operating system: hardware and application interfaces, processes, threads, synchronization, interprocess communication, processor allocation, deadlocks, memory management, file systems and input/output control.  Uses examples from many real operating systems (UNIX, MS-DOS, Windows NT) to reinforce concepts.

4 QH credit
Prerequisite: COM 1201, COM 1130.

Course Information

• Fall 2000
• Winter 2001

Course Format

BSCS03 required course
BSCS04 Systemscore
BACS elective course
BSIS general elective

This is a second course in the System core for BS CS majors graduating in the years 2004 and beyond. It is a required course for BS CS majors graduating in the years 2003 and before.

Course Coordinator

Professor Ken Baclawski and John Casey
kenb@ccs.neu.edu and jcasey@ccs.neu.edu

Textbooks and References

Silberschatz Galvin, and Gagne, Applied Operating Systems Concepts, John Wiley and Sons.

Andrew Tanenbaum and Albert Woodhull, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, Second edition, Prentice Hall, 1997.

Course Goals

The primary objective is for the student to understand and to apply technical knowledge when solving programming problems and designing software.  This includes:

Hardware Architecture and Representation of Information

• Organization of data storage
• Organization of the memory hierarchy
• Caching of data in memory
• Principles of I/O devices and transmission
• Principles of layering and encapsulation
Systems Principles
• Operating system as a mechanism of information hiding
• Operating system, programming language, and API as a resource manager
• Application programming support
• Information storage and retrieval
• Languages, API's, and operating systems in defining the abstract machine
Secondary objectives include understanding the following:

Complexity Issues

• System size and number of components
• Interfaces between components
• Interfaces between a system and users
Meaning of Design Documents
• Goals, requirements and external interfaces
• Organization, architecture and internal interfaces
• Specifications
Technical Judgements
• Quantitative reasoning
Scale and magnitude
Estimation and computation
• Qualitative reasoning and common sense
Costs versus benefits
Engineering tradeoffs
• Creative thinking
Propose alternative hypotheses
Apply facts and theory to determine a course of action

Prerequisites by Topic

• Personal effectiveness
• Object-oriented programming in the small
Program synthesis
Program analysis
Program design
Program composition
• Basic mathematical literacy
• Computer architecture
• Assembly language

Major Topics Covered in the Course

• Introduction to Operating Systems
• Processes and Threads
• Interprocess Communication
• Input/Output Devices
• Time Management
• Memory Management
• File Systems
• Security

Laboratory projects

Four laboratory projects (2 weeks each):
• Java Practice
• Synchronization
• Disk Scheduling
• Memory Management