Course announcements Thanks for taking CPS 310. Have a great holiday! Resources: Promoted: Learn Better. Think Smarter. The Academic Resource Center (ARC) offers free services to undergraduate students, including Learning Consultations, Peer Tutoring and Study Groups, ADHD/LD Coaching, Outreach Workshops, and more. Because learning is a process unique to every individual, we work with each student to discover and develop their own academic strategy for success at Duke. Contact the ARC to schedule an appointment. Undergraduates in any year, studying any discipline can benefit! 211 Academic Advising Center Building, East Campus behind Marketplace, arc.duke.edu, theARC@duke.edu, 919-684-5917. The topics page has a list of course topics and some related readings. You should keep an eye on that and keep up with the readings. C sample programs Read C-101 page at Stanford. This material will not be tested, but some familiarity will save you programming time. Start with the EssentialC pdf. There is other useful material on the site. Online textbook resource. The Arpaci-Dusseau team has an excellent textbook Three Easy Pieces. The book is closely matched to the needs of the class at least through the first six weeks. In the second half of the class we will move away from core OS topics and toward networked/distributed systems. Recommended: tutorial on linked lists in C Recommended: C and Python: see how they run

This course gives an introduction to systems concepts and operating systems. Traditionally the course emphasizes classical operating systems topics: concurrency, facilities for storage, communication, and protection, kernel services and structure, architecture/OS interaction, distributed systems, and practical application of operating system concepts in real operating systems. We also explore the nature of "systems" as an evolving discipline encompassing all aspects of bridging the gap between applications and hardware.

More broadly, an operating system is software that controls some programmable platform for sharing resources and data. All operating systems must deal with core issues of protection, resource management, program environment and execution, coordination, and reliable state storage and recovery. Various programming systems ranging from cloud services to Web frameworks to programmable networks to browsers meet our definition of a "programmable platform". About half the course focuses on classical OS topics; the other half covers other principles and topics that are important for understanding modern networked software ecosystems.

The prerequisites for this course are introductory programming and basic computer architecture (e.g., CPS 250). The intended audience is computer science undergraduates and graduate students needing a background in systems. Welcome to the Machine [PDF] is a quick-and-dense overview of relevant computer architecture: if it mostly makes sense to you, then you'll be OK. You should take time to review any unfamiliar topics or terms discussed in that document.

There is no required textbook. Several texts are available and may be worth the investment: see the intro lecture notes. Operating Systems in Three Easy Pieces (OSTEP) is an excellent resource for at least the first half of the course. There is lots of useful material in the classic computer systems textbook Bryant/O'Hallaron CS:APP.

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