Objectives - In completing this class, students will...

• understand key concepts involving system resource management, organization, and abstraction
• understand how an OS manages and interfaces with hardware
• understand fundamental trade-offs integral to system design
• experience both development and experimentation in a real OS

Structure - This class is broken into two main activities: lectures and lab.

• Lectures will discuss the main concepts in systems with reference to implementation details where beneficial. A series of written homeworks and exams (midterm and final) test student's understanding of the lecture's concepts.
• Labs will help you jump into the Linux kernel and learn how to write and understand code in key subsystems. You will have programming assignments related to lab lectures throughout the semester. In the second half of the class, you will have a large group project involving kernel programming.

Prerequisites:

• Computer Architecture I, Software Engineering
• Assignments for this class will be done in C, and will require kernel-level programming. Though we do not assume that you have kernel experience, if you aren't somewhat comfortable with C, you will have a very difficult time. Thus, a familiarity with C or a willingness to quickly learn and practice it is required.

  If you are not comfortable with C, at least go through Essential C and the exercises in the Course Material Section.

Responsibilities - Students must

1. Attend all classes unless you are sick or there is an emergency.
2. Interact, ask questions, and generally participate in class discussions.
3. Attend all labs, and do work assigned therein.
4. Complete programming problems assigned in lab, and all written assignments individually.
5. Work productively as a group on an extended and difficult project.

Required Text:

• Operating Systems Concepts, 8th edition, by Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne

If you have trouble understanding the Linux source code, I recommend the following books:

• Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love
• Professional Linux Kernel Architecture by Wolfgang Mauerer (free pdf should be available)

For kernel development, we will be using VMWare. If you can't install it on your home computer and want to, post on Piazza.

If you're having trouble with C, here is a list of references:

• a good short refresher/introduction is Nick Parlante's Essential C, memory and pointers, linked lists, and linked list problems. These are reproduced from here. The Linked List problem sets are especially useful.
• A few resources from our Software Engineering course (i.e. csci2113).
• If you're having trouble understanding what a specific declaration is in C, use the cdecl command, or, if it isn't installed, you can use the cdecl webpage.
• For those of you who know C, but want to learn how to write better C, one source is the Composite Style Guide.

It is your responsibility to get up to speed in C, so please use these resources.

Once you are more advanced in C, it will be useful to read the style guide for Composite, our research OS here at GWU.

Events are in bold. Note that this schedule is subject to change.

Topic	Reading
Introduction and OS fundamentals Definitions, Computer Architecture, OS History, OS Structure	Chapter 1,2
Processes, Inter-Process Communcation, Threads Address spaces, I/O, Isolation, and Run-states	Chapter 3, 4
CPU Scheduling and Synchronization Scheduling Mechanisms, Algorithms, and Evaluation. Critical Sections and how they are provided	Chapter 5, 6, 19
Synchronization Cont. and Deadlock Semaphores/Monitors, Deadlock conditions and Solutions	Chapter 6, 7
Midterm	N/A
Memory Management Allocation Algorithms	Chapter 8
Memory Management and Protection Segmentation, Paging, TLBs, Address Translation, Demand Paging	Chapter 9
Cloud Computing and Resource Management Virtual Machines, Memory Migration, Service-oriented computating	TBA
Distributed Computation Map Reduce, Reliability, Performance	TBA
Thanksgiving Break	N/A
Course Reflection	N/A
Final Exam	N/A

• Class Introduction, OS definition and history [pdf]
• System structure and protection [pdf]
• System structure and processes [pdf]
• IPC and threads [pdf]
• Synchronization [pdf]
• Deadlocks [pdf]
• Scheduling [pdf]
• Real-Time Scheduling [pdf]
• Memory Management [pdf]
• Memory Management II [pdf]
• File Systems APIs and Abstractions [pdf]
• File Systems Design and Implementation [pdf]
• Disk Scheduling [pdf]

Grades will be assigned with the following proportions:

Homeworks and Quizes: 50%
Midterm: 20%
Final: 20%
Class and Lab Participation: 10%

Homeworks include smaller programming assignment, written responses, and a long final programming project.

Participation will be graded not only on attendance (50%), but also on interactivity and involvement (50%).

If needs be, there will be short quizzes at the beginning of classes.

Late Policy:

• 66% credit: up to 24 hours late
• 33% credit: up to 48 hours late
• 0% credit: later than that

Because homeworks are every week, or every other week, it is too harmful to get behind on them. Thus the late policy is quite strict to discourage procrastination.

Just as you can do a google search for code online, it is trivial for us to do the same. We have caught numerous people cheating in the past in this way. If you feel pressured about an assignment, please come see me instead of cheating.

You are not allowed to collaborate on the homeworks and the lab assignments. The group projects require collaboration amidst each group, but no collaboration between teams is permitted. Please refer to the academic integrity policy linked from the course web page. This policy will be strictly enforced. If you're having significant trouble with an assignment, please contact me.
Academic Integrity Policy
Credit: I'd like to thank Prof. Narahari for the first versions of this academic honesty policy.

If you're interested in Composite, the OS we are developing here at GW, don't hesitate to contact me.

In addition to the contents of the class, what follows is a list of resources that will allow you to go beyond what you've learned. This material is not mandatory for the class and is meant to give you a springboard if you wish to pursue the ideas further. Many of these are blog posts or articles for easy reading. However, because of the informal format, please take the contents with a grain of salt. I can point you to more thorough content if you want it. If you find an website/article/tool that you think is worthy of being in this list, let me know.

Websites geared toward systems topics (or that have subsections on systems):

• Linux Weekly News: Free content is that which is at least a week old (see the Archives).
• Two brilliant classes on microkernel construction.
• Arstechnica: geek news, often with a high-level overview of systems/architectural topics.
• OKLabs videos. A microkernel company. Specifically, see the series titled, "Advanced OS with Gernot Heiser".
• OSDev Wiki: the resource on practical OS construction and hardware manipulation.
• Agner's blog: What's happening in those processors of ours? See more architecture discussions at real world tech.
• From low-level embedded system hacking, to robotics, to hacking! Hackaday!

Blogs and articles (remember that these are not authoritative sources!):

• On binaries and understanding process layout: A Whirlwind Tutorial on Creating Really Teensy ELF Executables for Linux, and playing with binary construction.
• On memory management: A look at how malloc works on the Mac, and memory allocation -- magic no more!
• On transactional memory (a synchronization mechanism):A (brief) retrospective on transactional memory
• Concurrency via events or threads? Why not both! And how do you provide an interface to it?
• A great email thread about efficient IPC implementation.
• What every programmer should know about memory. Seriously. He's not kidding. Read this. And look at the motivational graphs.
• Like file systems? Get some history.
• Higher-level description of a modern filesystem, ZFS
• On the hardware manipulations necessary to boot an OS: Roll your own toy UNIX-clone OS.
• A simple UNIX clone: xv6.
• Correct use of virtual memory: You're Doing It Wrong.
• Intricacies of C,v1, v2, v3, and v4 ...and you thought C was simple.
• How do they build the large-scale distributed systems at Google? Here's a hint!
• A history of networking physical level with ethernet, and a great history of UNIX
• Interface design is difficult. Where did UNIX get it wrong? Must read for anyone thinking about designing an interface.
• On the Brokenness of File Locking, or "why interface design matters".
• A great resource on parallel programming.
• Browsers don't do magic either! They are just very, very, very complex beasts.
• Why low-level programming matters even if you don't plan on doing it in the future.
• Premature optimization may be the root of all evil. But sometimes understanding how to do it is essential.
• Coding style matters. Read how others have decided on a style: Linux and Composite
• Reasonable lists of historical publications that have defined computing as we know it.

Really. cool. tools:

• DynamoRIO: Because it rocks to modify a program as it's executing.
• SQLite: a small, well written, data-base. Use it, read it, and be merry.
• Lua: a tiny language with a runtime of about 10K LOC. If you want to know what a language does under the wraps, here's a good place to find out (just ignore some of the syntax oddities).
• Valgrind: Ever wonder what your program's been doing in its spare time? This will tell you. Required for debugging large C/C++ programs.
• LLVM: A beautiful compiler backend. If you want to write a language, this will make your life so much easier.
• FUSE: Want to write a file-system, but aren't sure about all of that kernel programming? And what if you need to use high-level libraries? No problem; do it is user-space!
• Daikon: Because who doesn't want to use machine learning to infer their own program's behavior?
• More powerful link-time optimization!
• A great C library for simple machine learning operations such as classification.