Course Syllabus: Lectures
Office Hours
Textbooks
Outcomes
Grading Policy
Schedule
Instructor
Dennis Brylow
Email: brylow at mscs dot mu dot edu
Office: Cudahy 201C
Lab: Cudahy 310

Meetings
MWF 2:00-2:50pm, CU 120

Office Hours (Virtual)
Mon   12:00pm  -  1:00pm
Mon   9:00pm  -  10:00pm
Wed   12:00pm  -  1:00pm
Fri   9:00am  -  10:00am
Lab Instructors
Alex Gebhard
Jack Forden

Labs
Thu   Noon  -  1:50pm   CU 310
Thu   2:00pm  -  3:50pm   CU 310

Lab TA Office Hours
Mon   6:00pm  -  8:00pm   Discord channel
MU CS Department Logo

Textbooks

Textbook Cover

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces,
Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau.
Arpaci-Dusseau Books
August, 2018 (Version 1.00)
[This book is freely available at http://ostep.org/]
Textbook Cover

The C Programming Language ,
2nd Edition.
Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.
Prentice Hall.
ISBN: 978-0131103627

Readings will be regularly assigned from the textbooks.
Lectures will assume that students have already read the assigned chapters.

Course Outcomes

This is a course on operating systems concepts, with an emphasis on building a small embedded operating system on modern RISC hardware. Upon completing this course, students will be able to:

For those of you interested in curriculum details, this course will correspond to the following components in the Joint ACM / IEEE Computer Society Taskforce report, Computer Science Curricula 2013: Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computer Science:


Knowledge Unit Core-Tier 1 Hours Core-Tier 2 Hours
Operating Systems (OS) 4 11

Course Policies

Grades

Grades will be calculated using the following formula:
Projects 60% Weekly individual or team projects and homework assignments
Lab Participation 5% Participation in weekly laboratory activities
Midterm Exam 15% Midterm exam
Final Exam 20% Final exam

Grades will be assigned using the standard formula: A: [93, 100]; A-: [90, 93); B+: [86, 90); B: [82, 86); B-: [78, 82); C+: [74, 78); C: [70, 74); C-: [66, 70); D+: [62, 66); D: [58, 62); F: [0, 58)
At the instructor's discretion, grades may be "curved" up; grades will not be curved down.

Grades will be routinely posted in the gradebook on the course D2L site, as they become available.

Attendance

Student attendance will not be explicitly tracked in this course, and will not directly impact student grades. However, students who routinely miss class discussions or lectures should expect to be unprepared to complete the assignments and exams upon which grades so heavily depend. In short, I don't bother with attendance bean-counting because students who cut class usually fail themselves out of the course before I would need to take any action. Make good decisions.

If you know you will be missing class for a legitimate reason, I appreciate a heads-up, but in accordance with Marquette University Attendance Policies, neither require nor accept documented excuses, except in those specific cases detailed in the policy above. Please try to have a peer in the class take notes in your absence, and get any assignments in ahead of the deadline.

The size and structure of this course will not normally allow me to accept late work under any circumstances. There are enough opportunities for points in the course for most students to miss a few without severe consequences for their grades.

Academic Integrity

All students are expected to abide by Marquette University's Policy on Academic Integrity, and we will proceed under the assumption that everyone has committed themselves to the University's Honor Pledge:

I recognize the importance of personal integrity in all aspects of life and work. I commit myself to truthfulness, honor, and responsibility, by which I earn the respect of others. I support the development of good character, and commit myself to uphold the highest standards of academic integrity as an important aspect of personal integrity. My commitment obliges me to conduct myself according to the Marquette University Honor Code.

The Honor Code has particular implications for computer scientists and engineers, as well as computing professors, whose course work is so readily duplicated and shared in our modern digital world.

For my part, I will strive to ensure that your assignments and exams are engaging, challenging, and worth your investment in time and energy. For your part, I expect you will work hard, strive to learn, and present your work with honesty and integrity.

There will be many opportunities for you to collaborate with your peers in this course, and I strongly encourage you both to seek help when you are stuck, and to share your knowledge with your peers when you have achieved understanding. Problems will only occur if you falsely claim work as your own when it is not, or collaborate when an exam or assignment has been specified to be individual work.

In the unlikely event of an academic integrity violation in this course, Marquette University's Procedures For Incidents of Academic Dishonesty will be closely followed.

COVID-19

This is obviously a uniquely uncertain and difficult time for most, if not all of us. Your instructor, the CS Department, and Marquette are all deeply committed to supporting the safety, health and well-being of all of our students and staff. Toward that end:

We are Marquette, and I consider it to be my job to get as many of you as possible successfully through a challenging class in this chaotic time.

Schedule

Week Topics Readings Assignments
01 Introduction and Overview
C basics, Representation, Operators
KR Ch 1-5 Project 1: UNIX and C
02 C structs, Pointers, I/O KR Ch 6-8 Project 2: UNIX and C
03 Labor Day
Virtualization; Concurrency; Persistence
OSTEP Ch 1-4 Project 3: Serial Driver
04 Processes; Context; Trap Handlers OSTEP Ch 5-8 Project 4: Context Switch
05 Process Scheduling OSTEP Ch 9-12 Project 5: Trap Handlers
06 Address Spaces; Memory API
OSTEP Ch 13-16 Project 6: Process Scheduling
07 Address Translation; Memory Management OSTEP Ch 17-20 Project 7: Multicore Scheduling
08 Paging; TLBs; Concurrency
MIDTERM EXAM in Lab, Thu Oct 15
Midterm Break - Oct 16
OSTEP Ch 25,26
09 Threads; Locks OSTEP Ch 27-30 Project 8: Memory Management
10 Condition Variables; Semaphores OSTEP Ch 31-37 Project 9: Thread API
11 File Systems OSTEP Ch 38-41 Project 10: File Systems
12 Mass Storage Systems OSTEP Ch 42-46 Project 11: File Sharing
13 File Systems OSTEP Ch 21-24
14 Virtual Memory
Thanksgiving Break
(End of face-to-face class)
15 Study Days
FINAL EXAM
Wed Dec 02, 10:30am-12:30pm
The instructor reserves the right to adjust this schedule as necessary.

[Revised 2020 Aug 25 23:52 DWB]