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 3:00-3:50pm, MH 100

Office Hours
Mon   2:00pm  -  3:00pm
Mon   9:00pm  -  10:00pm
Wed   2:00pm  -  3:00pm
Fri   9:00am  -  10:00am
Lab Instructors
Patrick Woodford
Avery Guething
Brad Cooley
Jack Pfeiffer
Rade Latinovich
Labs
Thu   8:00am  -  9:50am   CU 310
Thu   10:00am  -  11:50am   CU 310
Thu   Noon  -  1:50pm   CU 310
Thu   2:00pm  -  3:50pm   CU 310
Fri   10:00am  -  11:50am   CU 310
Teaching Assistants
Olawunmi George
Taiwo Damilola Fasae



Lab TA Office Hours
Mon   6:00pm  -  9:00pm   CU 310
MU CS Department Logo

Textbooks

Textbook Cover

Operating Systems Concepts,
9th Edition.
Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin,
   and Greg Gagne.
John Wiley & Sons.
ISBN: 978-1-118-06333-0.
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 Exams 20% Two midterm exams
Final Exam 15% 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.

Schedule

Week Topics Readings Assignments
01 Introduction and Overview KR Ch 1,2 Project 1: UNIX and C
02 C structs, Dynamic Memory Allocation KR Ch 3,4,5 Project 2: UNIX and C
03 Processes KR Ch 6; SGG Ch 1-3 Project 3: Serial Driver
04 Threads KR Ch 7; SGG Ch 4 Project 4: Spinlocks
05 Process Synchronization SGG Ch 5
06 CPU Scheduling
Midterm Exam #1 - 2020 Feb 19
SGG Ch 6 Project 5: Context Switch
07 Deadlocks SGG Ch 7 Project 6: Priority Scheduling
08 Main Memory and Virtual Memory SGG Ch 8,9 Project 7: Synchronization Primitives
Spring Break
09 Mass Storage
10 File Systems SGG Ch 10 Project 8: Memory Management
11 File Systems SGG Ch 11,12 Project 9: Intercore Communication
12 Virtual Machines
Midterm Exam #2 - 2020 Apr 08
SGG Ch 12
13 Virtual Machines SGG Ch 16 Project 9: Intercore Communication
14 Distributed Systems SGG Ch 17 Project 10: File Systems
15 Advanced Topics TBD
The instructor reserves the right to adjust this schedule as necessary.

[Revised 2020 Jan 24 14:41 DWB]