Computer Science

General goals: Our goal in this class is to unfold the concepts, structure, and mechanisms of modern operating systems. We will provide a thorough discussion of the fundamental characteristics that apply consistently throughout systems, and relate them to newer features raising from the recurrent development of technology and user necessities. Specific goals: The class will cover the characteristics and concepts of modern operating systems, with a particular reference to Unix and Linux. We will start off with a description of the evolution of the operating systems in time. Then, we will continue with fundamental concepts like processes, deadlock detection, mitigation, and prevention, concurrency and mutual exclusion, memory, processor, and I/O management, file systems, and security. Knowledge and understanding Deep understanding of how an operating system supports the execution of user programs and handles hardware peripherals of a computer. Techniques and fundamental methodologies to represent processes in main and secondary memory and to handle multiprogramming— multiple processes executed simultaneously in a systems with limited resources. Applying knowledge and understanding Being able to design user and system level programs in an efficient and secure way. Critical and judgmental skills: Being able to evaluate and foresee how programs will require and use system resources, uncover possible deadlock and livelock conditions in a multiprogramming system, guarantee the mutual exclusion among processes and protected access of sensitive memory and resources. Communication skills: Know how to communicate clearly and in a precise way the characteristics and support mechanisms provided by the operating systems. Learning capability: Being able to exploit the knowledge acquired in order to design system modules, user and system level programs in the second module of the course. Leveraging this knowledge to better understand more complex systems like distributed and cloud ones.