Topic outline

  • If you want to know what software, systems, and software systems are, you definitely should take this course. Knowledge of operating system technologies gives you the basic tools to understand any complex software system. The technologies are applied ubiquitously, spanning from tiny sensor tags to huge data centers, but also throughout the software stack from machine interface level to high abstraction level application software.

    Material

    The course material is summarized by the lecture slides. The recommended textbook is:

    • William Stallings: Operating Systems Internals and Design Principles. (Any recent edition is ok for studying the course.)
    The course handles issues widely and addresses also recent developments in the area, this true especially for the lectures.

    The main reference is the textbook, which focuses on technical solutions. The lectures cover the thinking behind the technical solutions. The lecture slides will be made available here on MyCourses for Aalto users (see "Materials"), but they are not transcripts of the lectures (i.e., not substitutes for attending the lectures).

    The material on A+ concentrates on the exercises.

    Learning outcomes and content

    Learning Outcome: You understand the principles of operating system implementation.

    Content: Systems in general, software system structures, processing, memory systems, storage systems, concurrency and parallelism.

    Schedule

    The course spans over two periods (periods I-II during the autumn). There are weekly lectures, exercise sessions, and exercises (i.e., assignments to be done as homework).

    Note that the amount of work you need depends on the grade you are targeting. For a top grade, you will need a lot of work hours.

    Components of the course

    The course consist of multiple components

    • the lectures
    • exercises and exercise sessions
    • the exam
    For passing the course, passing both the exam and the exercises is mandatory.

    Corona pandemic related information: during teaching periods of Autumn 2020, all the course components can be done remotely online.

    Previous courses

    Substitutes for Courses: Replaces the course CSE-C3200 and its predecessors.

    Contact

    If you have something to ask about the subject matter, attend lectures/exercises or use the course discussion forum (seek the weekly sections for more info). If you have something to ask about the course, contact cs-c3140 at aalto.fi. Do not use the personal email addresses of the course personnel for contacting.