This course takes a detailed look at the services provided by, and the internals of, an existing operating system to see how each part is constructed and integrated into the whole. The lectures will also address recent literature describing advances in operating systems. The following topics are addressed: system programming and its facilities (including I/O, signals, job control, interprocess communication, sockets, transport layers, remote operations), system calls and their relation to the system libraries, process management and coordination, implementation of message passing, memory management, interrupt handling, real-time clocks, device-independent input/output, serial-line drivers, network communication, disk drivers, deadlock avoidance, scheduling paradigms, file systems, security.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion, students will have the knowledge and skills to:
- Identify and evaluate features of the system library of a particular operating system, and be able to apply this knowledge to program small applications
- Describe and analyse the actual algorithms and data structures that are used in a particular operating system
- Define and analyse the structure of operating systems in general, especially those that support communicating processes
- Identify and describe the reasons for many architectural features of contemporary machines
- Demonstrate experience in the design and implementation of a large software system
Indicative Assessment
- Assignments (30) [LO 1,2,5]
- Tutorials and Laboratories (10) [LO 1,3,4]
- Final Exam (60) [LO 1,2,3,4,5]
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Workload
Lectures, laboratory sessions and self study to add to a total of 130 hours.
Inherent Requirements
None
Requisite and Incompatibility
Prescribed Texts
See Class Summary.
Preliminary Reading
Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau. Operating systems: three easy pieces. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018. The entire textbook is available online from the first author's website: https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/
Fees
Tuition fees are for the academic year indicated at the top of the page.
Commonwealth Support (CSP) Students
If you have been offered a Commonwealth supported place, your fees are set by the Australian Government for each course. At ANU 1 EFTSL is 48 units (normally 8 x 6-unit courses). More information about your student contribution amount for each course at Fees.
- Student Contribution Band:
- 2
- Unit value:
- 6 units
If you are a domestic graduate coursework student with a Domestic Tuition Fee (DTF) place or international student you will be required to pay course tuition fees (see below). Course tuition fees are indexed annually. Further information for domestic and international students about tuition and other fees can be found at Fees.
Where there is a unit range displayed for this course, not all unit options below may be available.
| Units | EFTSL |
|---|---|
| 6.00 | 0.12500 |
Course fees
- Domestic fee paying students
| Year | Fee |
|---|---|
| 2024 | $4980 |
- International fee paying students
| Year | Fee |
|---|---|
| 2024 | $6360 |
Offerings, Dates and Class Summary Links
ANU utilises MyTimetable to enable students to view the timetable for their enrolled courses, browse, then self-allocate to small teaching activities / tutorials so they can better plan their time. Find out more on the Timetable webpage.
Class summaries, if available, can be accessed by clicking on the View link for the relevant class number.
Second Semester
| Class number | Class start date | Last day to enrol | Census date | Class end date | Mode Of Delivery | Class Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9183 | 22 Jul 2024 | 29 Jul 2024 | 31 Aug 2024 | 25 Oct 2024 | In Person | N/A |
