The purpose of this course is to teach operating system design from a research point of view. We will go over key topics of operating systems, walk through the evolution of many different operating systems techniques, and examine their usage in both important historical systems and in modern systems.
We will be going over the following topics:
This is a research-oriented seminar course with a major research project. In short, the course is about discussing and learning (by doing!) computer systems research.
Prerequisite: CS 423, ECE 391, CS 425, and CS 433 (or equivalent). Take the Prerequisite Quiz if you are not sure.
The course does not have a textbook. Instead, the course material will come from research papers, articles, and online resources. We will have assigned papers to read and discuss them in the class. You are expected to read these papers before coming to class, and be prepared to discuss them.
I highly recommend you to read Griswold's advices on how to read a research paper. The take-home message is that until you can answer a bunch of questions, you are not done reading a paper.
I also strongly encourage you to discuss the papers with other students in the class — you may have insights that others do not, and vice versa. Oftentimes, students form reading groups, which I heartily encourage; on the other hand, I would like to point out that group discussion is not an effective substitute for actually reading the paper.
If you need a textbook to review and catch background, I recommend the OSTEP book.
For this semester, we will emphasize more on hands-on research projects than paper reading.
Since this is a research-based course, class participation is required. We (everyone) will discuss the papers and our research progress in class. Note that your performance in class form 10% of your overall grade, so it does matter that you both show up to class and participate in the discussion.
The best way to learn is by doing. For this semester, we will do a research project together and you will also have the opportunity to undertake your own research project. We will discuss (and debate) our progress and results during the class. You will write a project report and present it at the end of the course. The details of the research project will be announced later.
You are expected to be aware of Academic Integrity Guidelines of the University of Illinois. Any violation of the course or university policies will be treated seriously, and could lead to severe repercussions. Pleae don't cheat. It's not worth it.
There is no midterm or final exams. The course is about discussing Systems research (10%) and doing Systems research (90%). We will have assignments every week and discuss the progress at the Thursday class. There are two labs, each contributing to 25%.
This course is designed based on CSE 221 (Graduate Operating Systems) taught at University of California at San Diego (where I did my PhD). It was my favourite course during my grad school -- I took it and TA-ed for it multiple times with different professors including Geoff Voelker, Yuanyuan Zhou, and Stefan Savage. They should take the credits for the course design.