CS 421 - Operating Systems

Units: 3
Principles of operating system design and implementation. Concurrent processes, interprocess communication, job and process scheduling, deadlock. Issues in memory management (virtual memory, segmentation, paging) and auxiliary storage management (file systems, directory structuring, protection mechanisms). Performance issues. Programming projects.

Prerequisites: CS 301 with grade C- or better.
Possible Instructional Methods: On-ground, or Hybrid or Online-Asynchronous.
Grading: A-F grading only.
Course Typically Offered: Fall & Spring

Student Learning Outcomes - Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

Analyze the tradeoffs inherent in operating system structure and design;
Evaluate the common algorithms used for both preemptive and non-preemptive scheduling of tasks in operating systems;
Design and implement a multi-threaded application;
Compare and contrast the range of mechanisms that can be employed at the operating system level to realize concurrent systems;
Apply the principles of virtual memory to caching and paging implementations and analyze their performance.