Operating systems
Undergraduate · CS / Programming
Syllabus focus
Topics typically covered
Standard syllabus
Processes and threads
- Process abstraction; PCB and context switch
- CPU scheduling: FCFS, SJF, priority, round-robin
- Synchronization: mutexes, semaphores, monitors
- Classic problems: producer–consumer, readers–writers
- Deadlock: conditions, prevention, avoidance, detection
Memory and storage
- Virtual memory, paging, and TLBs
- Page replacement policies: LRU, clock (intro)
- Segmentation and combined models (survey)
- File systems: inode, directories, allocation methods
- I/O scheduling and disk management (intro)
Core OS mechanisms
- Processes vs threads; context switching
- Scheduling policies and fairness tradeoffs
- Virtual memory, paging, and TLBs (intro)
- Synchronization: mutexes, semaphores, condition variables
- Deadlock conditions and avoidance/detection
- File systems metadata and crash consistency (survey)
STEM / applied
Implementation themes
- System call interface and kernel modules (survey)
- Implementing a simple shell or scheduler simulation
- Memory-mapped files and copy-on-write (intro)
- Containers and cgroups/namespaces (intro)
- Tracing tools: strace, perf, eBPF overview
Security and reliability
- Access control models: DAC, MAC (intro)
- Kernel exploit mitigations (ASLR, NX) survey
- Logging, crash dumps, and postmortem debugging
- Distributed file systems and consistency (intro)
- Case studies: Linux, Windows, or xv6 teaching OS
Systems programming practice
- System calls and writing small userland tools
- Concurrency bugs and ThreadSanitizer (intro)
- Implementing a simple shell or allocator lab
- I/O stacks and buffering performance
- Containers as OS isolation primitives (survey)
- Capstone: OS lab milestone with tests and writeup
Notes
Often requires a systems prerequisite. Projects may use xv6, Pintos, or Linux kernel modules.