Latest Announcements
- 4/25: HW12 released
- Due May 4
- 4/21: HW10, HW11 updated
- We accidentally mis-coordinated among HW10, HW11, and class contents; apologies. HW10 had a problem for which we have not yet presented the material, and HW11 had a repeated problem. We've now updated both homworks with the updates labeled. If you have already turned in HW10, don't worry about it. If you have already turned in HW11, please see the updated question, and re-submit.
- 4/19: HW11 released
- Due April 27
- 4/8: Lab 5 released
- It's due April 30. As always, start on time.
- 4/8: Midterm exam scores are posted on Gradebook and NYU Classes
- Thanks for your patience.
- 4/8: Midterm exam and solutions posted
- On the Exams page
- 4/6: HW9 and HW10 released
- Due respectively on April 13 and April 23. Note that HW10 is due on a Friday, not the usual Tuesday.
- 4/1: HW8 released
- Due April 6
- 3/25: In-person office hours added
- Mike will hold an additional hour of office hours, outdoors, Fridays 4-5pm ET. Details.
- 3/25: HW7 released
- Due March 30
Course information
- Section: CSCI-UA.0202-001
- Lectures: MonWed 11:00 AM –12:15 PM, By video
- Communication:
- Please use Campuswire for questions about assignments. If you include code, please mark your question private (per the collaboration policy). Please expect response latency of 12 to 24 hours.
- For administrative and sensitive questions, please email cs202-21sp-staff@nyu.edu
- Please email individual course staff only for things like setting up meetings with that person; individual emails about labs or course administration may be dropped.
- Instructor: Michael Walfish
- Teaching Assistants: Elizabeth Labor, Adam Moritz, Sahana Upadhya
- Staff email addresses: [all are @nyu.edu:] em.labor, adam.moritz, su575, mw155
- Office hours:
Tue 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM Elizabeth Labor By video Wed 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM Sahana Upadhya By video Thu 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Adam Moritz By video Thu 8:30 PM – 9:30 PM Michael Walfish By video Fri 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM Michael Walfish In-person, at Sasaki Garden
The work
- The lectures will cover topics in operating systems and the topic of systems generally. The schedule is here.
- The labs are a crucial component of this course and are described here. You will implement, help implement, or interact with, a number of the abstractions described below.
- The exams are described here.
- The readings are listed on the schedule and should be completed before class. The required and optional texts are listed below.
- The homeworks (as distinct from the labs) are intended to reinforce the course material.
We assume that you check the announcements on this site every 24 hours. Also, we will use Campuswire (join the class here). Finally, we will occasionally email you (for the most urgent communications). You are responsible for monitoring all three of these media.
A note about the labs
We recommend that you start the labs long before they are due. The standard advice is "Start the labs early", but that is not quite right. The best advice, we think, is "Start the labs on time, but on time is probably much earlier than you think it is".
Description and goals
We hope you learn three sets of interrelated things. The first thing is how computers work. Students graduating with CS degrees should believe "there is no magic": they should be able to describe the chain of events that occurs when they hit a key and cause a letter to appear on the screen from the register level (or logical gate level or transistor level) to the system architecture level to the operating system level to the application level. This is philosophically important, but it is also of practical interest to developers who need to figure out how to make a system do what they want it to do.
The second goal is for you to learn the core ideas in operating systems: concurrent programming, memory protection, virtual addressing, file systems, scheduling, transactions, etc. Often, such ideas are best explained as abstractions that some software layer (usually the operating system) provides above imperfect hardware to make that hardware usable by programmers and users. The intent is for you to understand such abstractions well enough to be able to synthesize new abstractions when faced with new problems.
Many of the ideas and abstractions that we will cover are relevant not only to operating systems but also to large-scale systems. Thus, a third goal of this course is to enhance your ability to understand, design, and implement large-scale systems.
The coding workload in this class will be substantial. This is a necessity: understanding many of the ideas above requires implementing them or working through them in code. The good news is that if things go according to plan, you will learn a lot in this class, and ideally find it rewarding. For example, you will learn how operating systems are implemented, and how to effectively use the abstractions exported by operating systems.
Readings
Required texts
| OSTEP | Operating Systems: Three Easy
Pieces, by Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C.
Arpaci-Dusseau. Arpaci-Dusseau Books, August 2018, edition 1.00.
Note: This book is freely available online, at the link given. |
| OSM:SCI | Operating
Systems and Middleware: Supporting Controlled Interaction, by Max
Hailperin. June 2019, Revised Edition 1.3.1.
Note: As with the preceding text, this text is online and free. It is available under this Creative Commons license. |
| CS:APP3e | Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, Third
Edition, Randal E. Bryant and David R. O'Hallaron. (Pearson),
2010. ISBN: 013409266X.
Note: The prerequisite to this class (CS201) required this text, so we assume that you already have it. |
Optional texts
- Highly recommended: The C programming language (second edition), Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie. (Prentice Hall, Inc., 1988. ISBN: 0-13-110362-8.) This book is a classic reference to C.
- Optional: Operating Systems: Principles and Practice, Beta Edition, Anderson and Dahlin. (Recursive Books, 2012. ISBN: 0985673516.)
- Optional: Modern Operating Systems (third edition), Andrew S. Tanenbaum. (Prentice Hall, Inc., 2008. ISBN: 0-13-600663-9.) Note: the NYU bookstores list this text as required; it is not (it was in an earlier version of this class.)
- Optional: Principles of Computer System Design: An Introduction, Jerome Saltzer and M. Frans Kaashoek (Morgan Kaufmann, 2009. ISBN: 0-12-374957-3.)
- Optional: Operating System Concepts (eighth edition), Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, and Greg Gagne. (John Wiley & Sons, 2008. ISBN: 0-47-012872-0.)