CS2013-final-report

CS2200: Introduction to Systems and Networking, Georgia Institute of
Technology
Atlanta, GA
Kishore Ramachandran
rama@gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~rama/CS2200-External/
Knowledge Areas that contain topics and learning outcomes covered in the course
Knowledge Area
Systems Fundamentals (SF) 42
Total Hours of Coverage
Where does the course fit in your curriculum
This course is taken in the second semester of the sophomore year. The pre-requisite for this course is a good
knowledge of C and logic design. It is required for all CS majors wishing to specialize in: operating systems,
architecture, programming language and compilers, system security, and networking. It provides a thorough
understanding of the hardware and the system software and the symbiotic inter-relationship between the two.
Students may take advanced courses in operating systems, architecture, and networking following this course in
the junior and senior years. The course is offered 3 times a year (Fall, Spring, Summer) and the enrolment is
typically around 100 students.
What is covered in the course
The course represents a novel integrated approach to presenting side by side both the architecture and the
operating system of modern computer systems, so that students learn how the two complement each other in
making the computer what it is. The course consists of five modules, corresponding to the five major building
blocks of any modern computer system: processor, memory, parallelism, storage, and networking. Both the
hardware and system software issues are covered concomitantly in presenting the five units. Topics covered
include
• Processor design including instruction-set design, processor implementation (simple as well as pipelined
with the attendant techniques for overcoming different kinds of hazards), processor performance (CPI,
IPC, execution time, Amdahl’s law), dealing with program discontinuities (interrupts, traps, exceptions),
and design of interrupt handlers
• Processor scheduling algorithms including FCFS, SJF, priority, round robin, with Linux scheduler as a
real world example
• Memory system including principles of memory management in general (paging in particular) and the
necessary hardware support (page tables, TLB), page replacement algorithms, working set concepts, the
inter-relationship between memory management and processor scheduling, thrashing, and context
switching overheads
• Memory hierarchy including different organizations of processor caches, the path of memory access from
the processor through the different levels of the memory hierarchy, interaction between virtual memory
and processor caches, and page coloring
• Parallel programming (using pthreads), basic synchronization (mutex locks, condition variables) and
communication (shared memory), program invariants, OS support for parallel programming, hardware
support for parallel programming, rudiments of multiprocessor TLB and cache consistency
• Basics of I/O (programmed data transfer, DMA), interfacing peripherals to the computer, structure of
device driver software
• Storage subsystem focusing on hard disk (disk scheduling), file systems (naming, attributes, APIs, disk
allocation algorithms), example file systems (FAT, ext2, NTFS)
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