If you’re working in the lab, you might be editing a file while waiting for a program to compile. Meanwhile, the on-screen clock ticks, a program keeps watch for incoming e-mail, and other users can log onto your machine from elsewhere in the network. Not only that, but if you write a program that reads from a file on the hard drive, you are not expected to concern yourself with turning on the drive’s motor or moving the read/write arms to the proper location over the disk’s surface. Coordinating all this hardware and software is the job of the operating system. In this course we will study the fundamentals of operating system design, including the operating system kernel, scheduling and concurrency, memory management, and file systems.

Prerequisites: Computer Science 201 and 208 or instructor permission