CpSc 824 Syllabus

Advanced Operating Systems

Section 1: 10:10-11:00 MWF Daniel 408

Instructor:	Wayne Madison
Office:	Edwards 409
Telephone:	656-5862
Email:	wayne@cs.clemson.edu
Attendance:	Optional -- but students are responsible for any missed material, assignments, and handouts.
Prerequisites:	A thorough knowledge of basic operating system concepts is assumed. Some experience with the internal structure of a "real" operating system is also assumed. You must also be proficient in Unix and C.
Office Hours:	Scheduled office hours will be 9-10 daily. I am generally available during the day and would be glad to see you. Since meetings and other activities are scheduled with little or no notice however I would suggest you call ahead or send e-mail to confirm that I'm in the office.
Textbook:	Distributed Operating Systems and Algorithms, Randy Chow and Theodore Johnson, Addison-Wesley, 1997.
Objective:	Operating systems continue to evolve to manage increasingly complex system architectures and networks of computers. Networks of computers are now often viewed as a single resource as opposed to a collection of individual resources. The operating system provides the resource management and user interface that provides a transparent view of a collection of systems as single system. This course will place particular emphasis on distributed operating systems and the alogrithms that support distributed systems. We will find that some of the "old" solutions to standard operating sytem problem do not apply in a distributed environment.
Projects:	Projects will generally be individual projects, although 1 or more team projects is possible. Standard network programming features available in Solaris will be used. Proficiency in the C programming language and the Unix operating system is assumed.
Paper:	There will be at least one assignment that will require a paper based upon the research literature. More details will be provided later for this assignment.
Grading:	The final course grade will be determined as follows: Projects/homework: 20% Paper: 20% Tests(probably 2): 30% Exam: 30%
*Topics (tentative):*	The following are examples of topics we will cover this semester: Distributed Systems Concepts and Architectures Process Sychronization and Coordination Distributed Process Scheduling Distributed File Systems Distributed Shared Memory Distributed Computer Security Additional topics of interest...