CS 502
Operating Systems

Welcome to CS 502.  For this course, we will centralize the distribution of information to students here at the course web page. This page can be found on the WPI CS department web server at http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~cs502/s00-breecher/index.html. We will also post any necessary announcements regarding class or the project work to the class email list.

Basic Information

Course Description

Textbook

Class Email List

Lectures

Syllabus

The Project

Basic Information

Course Description

This course provides a graduate-level introduction to the theory and design of multiprogrammed operating systems. Some of the topic areas covered include concurrent processes, process communication, input/output supervisors, memory management, resource allocation, and process scheduling. Selected topics in distributed operating systems will also be addressed.

Textbook

Silberschatz, Abraham and Peter B. Glavin, Operating System Concepts, Fifth Edition, Addison Wesley, 1998.

Class Email List

The class email list is cs502@cs.wpi.edu.   This list is maintained by the majordomo server at cs.wpi.edu.  To add yourself to the cs502 mailing list, send an email message to majordomo@cs.wpi.edu whose body contains the line 'subscribe cs502' (again, without the quotes).  Note that this uses the reply_to field in the incoming message to add to the mailing list. 

Lectures

In the Table below are pointers to the notes for the course.  The formats available can be read by Microsoft Word (.doc) and Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt) or by Acrobat Reader (.pdf) or downloaded to a postscript printer.  Lectures generally will be from these notes. Feel free to print them out and use them during class to avoid extensive scribbling.

The Project

A significant component of the CS 502 course is the course project, in which you will design and implement a basic operating system for a Z502 processor (this is a hypothetical processor architecture and a simulator is provided). The overall project is divided into two project phases.  The first phase builds necessary data structures and implements multiprogram scheduling.  The second phase adds virtual memory management to the core implemented in phase 1. 

The project requires substantial programming in C, (3 to 4 thousand lines of code is not atypical, depending on commenting style), thus students should already have a sound programming foundation. CS 502 is not the place to "pick up" C. For more information, including project phase assignments and Z502 documentation, see the project web page(s).

For those of you who want a (free) viewer for PowerPoint slide presentations, you can download this viewer (also available from the Microsoft web site).

Power Point 97 Viewer Installation

Feedback (constructive criticism) on these course web pages is welcome, and should be directed to jb@sw.stratus.com.

http://www.wpi.edu/http://www.cs.wpi.edu/