EE 660 - Operating System Kernel Internals

3 Credit(s)

Topics include architecture, algorithms, and data structures of the kernel, the inner core of an operating system, with primary study of UNIX and examples from other operating systems, such as Windows. Operating system layered design; relation of the kernel to the hardware, shells, program libraries, system call interfaces, and user programs. Entry into the kernel through system calls and hardware interrupts; interrupt vector table/system control block. Timesharing concepts, clocks, quantum (time slice), context switching, clock interrupt handler. Process definition, properties, and states (user mode, kernel mode, sleeping, swapped, preempted, zombie, etc.). Kernel process data structures; virtual addressing, paging and swapping policies. Creation of child processes using system calls (fork and exec). Shell operation and kernel start-up. Algorithms and data structures for scheduling processes. Software signal mechanism. Kernel implementation and uses of interprocess communication—pipes, messages, semaphores, shared memory, sockets. Other possible topics include file and I/O subsystems and device drivers, and extensions for distributed and real-time operating systems.