Week 03 Notes for CS 3750 -- Fall 2003

• Take Roll.
  
  
• Look at the upcoming schedule and homework.
  
  
• Announcements
  
  
  • Readings and lectures this week are on chapters 3-4: Operating-System Structures and Processes.
    
    
  • Homework #1 is due Friday. I will collect homework at the beginning of class and discuss answers immediately. I will not accept homework late. You should save a copy of the homework to correct and study from for the quiz on Monday.
    
    
  • To study for the quiz you may: Do the reading, study homework answers, look at questions at the ends of the chapters, look at the review questions in the class web space, and examine the on-line notes. The homework questions, review questions and on-line notes will give you a pretty good idea of what I tend to stress.
    
    
• This week we are discussiong chapters three and four.
  
  
• Chapter 04 Synopsis: The job of the OS is to provide services to processes -- executing programs. The OS must keep track of information about each process. The abstract data structure used for that purpose is called a process control block (PCB). Much of what occurs in an OS can be understood as the movement of PCB's through a network of queues. Another major concept is that when concurrent processes share files, memory, and other resources they have to communicate and synchronize to avoid interfering with each other. (Our e-mail system is a case in point.) Programmers may provide the means by which their programs communicate with other programs. Alternatively, the OS may offer inter-process communication (IPC) facilities through the system-call interface -- often in the form of a message-passing system. Various styles of message passing are possible.