Computer Science 461 - Adv Operating Systems

Computer operating systems are responsible for allowing multiple running programs to share hardware resources.  The policies that dictate how those resources are shared determine the system's ability to provide good performance, fair sharing, isolation between programs, and predictable behavior.  There are many interacting policy choices that determine these properties, and measuring the effect of each requires careful empirical experimentation and analysis.  Research papers will describe and analyze policies that control processor scheduling, memory allocation and caching, disk scheduling and placement, network bandwidth allocation, and power consumption.  The policies may be specialized for different types of systems, such as servers and mobile devices.  We will design and perform experiments to further evaluate the policies, comparing them and analyzing their behavior. Offered in alternate years.

Requisite: COSC 112, 201, and 261.  Fall semester.  Professor Kaplan.