Lecture notes.

To answer and develop the ability to answer the following questions: What is the purpose of an operating system? How are operating systems constructed?

Introduction: resource manager view, virtual machine view, security; types of operating system. Machine organisation and input/output: polled input/output, interrupt driven input/output, device driver structure. The system nucleus (kernel): context switching, first level interrupt handling, kernel implementation of processes, kernel implementation of semaphores. Concurrent processes: interleaving, non-determinism, process interaction - sharing, synchronisation, communication, locks, semaphores, monitors. Scheduling: priority - pre-emption, run to completion, time sliced, multi-level queues. Program construction utilities: assembler, link editor, relocation. Memory management: single contiguous store allocation and overlays, fixed partition store allocation, dynamic partition store allocation and fragmentation/compaction, virtual addressing, memory management policies. Virtual memory: address translation, page faults, replacement policies, working sets, swapping.

Structure

1. Reading -You are advised to purchase a textbook for this course. See the Books section below.
2. Paper-and-pencil and laboratory exercises -Both assessed and unassessed exercises will be used to introduce important ideas. Thus if you don't do them in time, you won't know what's going on in the lectures.
3. Lectures - The primary objective of the lectures is to help you understand and use the textbooks. Copies of the lecture's overhead transparencies will be provided, and you are encouraged to make notes of your own.