CMSC 23000
Operating Systems
Preliminary syllabus (Winter 2006)

The following is a high-level list of the topics that will be covered in Operating Systems this year. Chapters refer to the main text (Operating systems concepts; 7th Ed). Note that not all all topics are covered by text; you are responsible for material presented in class.

  1. Concurrent programming (Chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7)
    Programming models, synchronization/communication mechanisms, and correctness issues.

  2. Implementation of the process abstraction (Chapters 5 and 6)
    Interrupt handlers, context switching, process state, implementation of threads, and implementation of synchronization primitives.

  3. Memory management (Chapters 8 and 9)
    Schemes for explicit memory management, virtual memory, garbage collection.

  4. Input/output (Chapter 13)

  5. Operating system architecture
    monolithic vs. micro kernels; single-threaded vs. multi-threaded; ...

  6. File systems (Chapters 11 and 12)

Last revised: December 30, 2005.