Operating System Foundations
2001-02
Principal lecturer:
Dr G.M. Bierman
(gmb@cl.cam.ac.uk)
Taken by: Part II (General), Diploma
Number of lectures: 16
Lecture location: Hopkinson Lecture Room
Lecture times: 12:00 on MWF starting 05-Oct-01
Aims
The overall aim of this course is to provide a general understanding
of how a computer works. This includes aspects of the underlying
hardware as well as the structure and key functions of the operating
system. Case studies will be used to illustrate and reinforce
fundamental concepts.
Objectives
At the end of the course students should be able to
- describe the fetch-execute cycle of a simple computer with
reference to the control and execution units
- understand the different types of information which may be
stored within a computer memory
- explain the concepts of process, address space, and file
- compare and contrast various CPU scheduling algorithms
- understand the differences between segmented and paged
memories, and be able to describe the advantages and disadvantages
of each
- compare and contrast polled, interrupt-driven and DMA-based
access to I/O devices
Syllabus and Timetable
Lecture One: Introduction and History
Date given: |
Friday 5th October |
Slides covered: |
i-iii & 1-5 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Two: Simple Computer Architecture I
Date given: |
Monday 8th October |
Slides covered: |
6-15 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Three: Simple Computer Architecture II
Date given: |
Wednesday 10th October |
Slides covered: |
16-26 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Read about Intel's new 64-bit architecture here
Lecture Four: Buses and I/O Devices
Date given: |
Friday 12th October |
Slides covered: |
27-36 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Five: Operating Systems: The Basics
Date given: |
Monday 15th October |
Slides covered: |
37-51 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Six: Processes I: The Basics
Date given: |
Wednesday 17th October |
Slides covered: |
52-59 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Example C code for a (forking) Unix process shown in lecture can also be found
here.
Lecture Seven: Processes II: CPU Scheduling
Date given: |
Friday 19th October |
Slides covered: |
60-70 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Eight: Memory Management I : Introduction
Date given: |
Monday 22nd October |
Slides covered: |
71-80 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Nine: Memory Management II: Paging and Segmentation
Date given: |
Wednesday 24th October |
Slides covered: |
81-94 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Ten: I/O
Date given: |
Friday 26th October |
Slides covered: |
95-104 (and 92-93 from previous lecture) |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Eleven: File Management
Date given: |
Monday 29th October |
Slides covered: |
105-115 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Twelve: Case Study I: Unix
Date given: |
Wednesday 31st October |
Slides covered: |
116-130 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Supporting Material (local copies):
- Ritchie and Thompson's original paper 1974.
ps, pdf
- Silberschatz et al.'s chapter on FreeBSD.
pdf
Lecture Thirteen: Case Study I: Unix cont.
Date given: |
Friday 2nd November |
Slides covered: |
131-143 (and 128-130 from previous lecture) |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Fourteen: Case Study II: Windows NT
Date given: |
Monday 5th November |
Slides covered: |
144-155 |
Actual slides used: |
ps (4up)
pdf (4up) |
Lecture Fifteen: Revision
We went over last years exam questions:
- 2001 Paper 1 Question 4.
pdf
- 2001 Paper 1 Question 11.
pdf
- 2001 Paper 1 Question 12.
pdf
Lecture Sixteen
This lecture was cancelled!
Lecture Notes
If you really want another copy of the handouts,
here they are (4up, ps).
Feedback Form
Please help us to improve this course. You can download a copy of the
feedback form here (Word format). Please
fill it in and return it to the Student Administrator, Lise Gough,
GC04, William Gates Building.
Supervision Guide
WARNING: This course has changed completely since last
year. It is now synchronised with the 1a Operating Systems course -
this year to be taught by Tim Harris in the Easter Term. As a
consequence, the relevant Tripos questions to be used for
supervisions, and revision can be found
here.
If you look at the actual slides used (links above) you will see
that I have included aims at the start of each lecture, and objectives
at the end. You can use the list of objectives as a tick list to make
sure you've covered at least the important points of the lecture.
I have also included some references at the end of each lecture for
further reading. Most of these refer to the Hennessy/Patterson and
Silberschatz et al. books. I strongly recommend that you do
some background reading - operating systems form a huge (and
interesting!) area of Computer Science, and there's lots of material
that we can't cover in a small, introductory course.
Supervisors: Please do not go over last year's (2001) questions with your
students - I plan to use these in my revision lecture.
II(G) | Dip
Provisional information only
Generated at 11:07.58 on 19/9/2001