CS 170: Operating Systems

Ben Y. Zhao -- Fall 2004

[ Information | Introduction | Class Mailing List ]

General Information


Introduction

This course focuses on the study of Operating System design and implementation, and serves as an introduction into the study of computing systems. Main topics include: processes; interprocess communication and synchronization; input-output, file systems, memory management and networking. The class itself has two main components, a design side that will be emphasized in lectures and an implementation side that will be explored through several programming projects.  The programming component of the course should build upon your previous experiences in CS130 or CS125 and give you a real taste of system programming.  You should contact the TAs for all questions regarding the homework assignments / labs.  I will hold weekly office hours (TBD) in order to answer questions on the materials covered in class and the exams, but simply will not have time to look at homework or programming assignments.

I will cover all of the course material in class in a presentation form, and will put the notes online in PDF format before the start of each lecture. Feel free to print them out and mark your notes on them.  Doing so will save you time from copying down basic terminology, allowing you to instead focus on understanding the material instead of working as a recorder.  We will also use Andrew Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems book as a reference (current edition is the second edition).  PLEASE finished the required reading before coming into lecture. I will lecture assuming you have read the material, and skipping reading assignment will just make it harder for you to keep up in lectures. I know that textbooks these days are in general ridiculously expensive, so I don't mind if you read the library copy or an older edition, as long as you make sure you know the material covered.


Class Mailing List

There is a class mailing list for CS170 here.  I will mass-subscribe everyone who is enrolled in the system as of the first lecture.  If you are added to the class after that, or if you did not receive a welcome email from cs170-users by this weekend (Sept. 25), please go to the website and subscribe yourself.  You can also do this if you want to have your class list email go to another address other than your umail address.

Please monitor the mailing lists frequently, since the TAs and I will frequently post important announcements to the list regarding changes in schedules, homeworks, code bugs, etc.