Overview of Operating Systems Introduction to Operating Systems: Module 0

Course Introduction u Course Overview  Objectives  Topics  Prerequisite knowledge u Course Material  Texbooks  eBooks  Course homepage  Helpful links  Syllabus  D2L  Assignments, quizzes

Objectives u Understand the principles of OS design  concentration on systems which are general-purpose multi-user single processor u See how OS design can impact program performance u Understand concurrency, and learn of the problems (such as race conditions) and tools used to solve them (such as semaphores) u Learn major features of the POSIX API  as implemented by Solaris

Core course topics u Computer architecture & OS foundations u Process management  Concurrency  Synchronization u Memory management u CPU scheduling u File systems

Prerequisite knowledge u The C++ programming language u Assembly language for some machine u Some familiarity with UNIX u Basic graph theory u Understanding of basic probability  Conditional probability  Expected value

What is an operating system? u Functions of an Operating System  Control resource allocation  Provide a user an environment for doing work u Traditional Design Approaches  Layers, modules, microkernel, monolithic u Traditional Types of Operating Systems  General Purpose  Multiprocessor  Distributed  Real-time

Functions of an OS: Resource Management u Time management - temporal properties  CPU and disk transfer scheduling u Space management  main and secondary storage allocation u Synchronization and deadlock handling  IPC, race condition, coordination u Accounting and status information  resource usage tracking

Functions of an OS: User Environment u Transforms bare hardware machine into higher level abstractions u Execution environment  process implementation  The processor does not know about processes  file manipulation  Blocks and sectors  file names and directories  interrupt handling  Serial device event  button click  I/O actions  Delayed block write scheduled  Save a file

What can understanding the OS do for me? u The machine code executed while your program is running is determined by the C++ statements in your program, the compiler and libraries, and the operating system CPU C++ program C++ Compiler Library Operating System