Overview

This course focuses on advanced systems programming, covering modern interfaces, libraries, and services used in today’s UNIX-based operating systems. Students will gain an understanding of how they are implemented and learn how to use them.

Prerequisites

COMS 3157 Advanced Programming

• Solid C programming experience and proficiency in UNIX command line environment

CSEE 3827 Fundamentals of Computer Systems

• Basic knowledge of computer hardware: register, cache, etc. Should be able to read simple assembly code (load, store, add, jump, etc.)

COMS 3134 Data Structures

• Solid on fundamental data structures (list, tree, stack, queue, etc.)

Textbooks

• Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment (APUE)
  3rd Edition, 2013, Addison-Wesley – by W. Richard Stevens, Stephen A. Rago

• Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective (CSAPP)
  3rd Edition, 2015, Pearson – by Randal E. Bryant and David R. O’Hallaron

• Various other online guides, blog posts, and original papers

Topics Covered

This list is still subject to change, but here’s a high-level list of topics we’re planning to cover.

• UNIX system fundamentals
• Git and GitHub
• Virtual memory, storage hierarchy, memory allocators
• File I/O
• Interprocess communication
• Threads and synchronization
• Processes and exceptional control flow
• Linkers, loaders, debuggers
• Containers

FAQ

Should I take ASP or OS? What’s the difference between them?

ASP aims to expose students to various interfaces/libraries/services in the UNIX system from the userspace perspective to get a better understanding of how to use them and to get more C programming experience. OS covers many of the same topics, but from the operating system’s perspective, requiring a deep understanding of C and the ability to read and write code in the Linux codebase.

ASP will help you if you want to take OS later because you’ll get more C programming earlier on. You’ll also be exposed to more systems concepts from the user’s perspective and be able to appreciate them more when you learn about them from the operating system’s perspective when you go on to take OS. However, ASP is not a prerequisite for OS. You can definitely take OS before ASP. You’ll come into ASP already having solid C programming experience and be able to pick up userspace systems concepts that you learned about from the operating system’s perspective in OS. The two classes complement each other!

How much time should I expect to spend on homework assignments?

You should expect the homework assignments to be between the difficulty of AP and OS. We’re planning for the assignments to be group-based, but it’s too early for us to commit to that. If you’re coming in already having taken OS/have significant C programming experience, you’re probably a lot better prepared for the coding in this course – the intermediate nature of ASP is meant to help students ramp up to the difficulty of the higher level systems courses, after all.

I took OS in a previous semester, is there any overlap? Is ASP still worth taking?

Jae’s previous offerings of OS dedicated about 7 lectures covering advanced userspace systems programming. We’ve now taken those 7 lectures out of Jae’s OS offering and expanded it to be just under half of ASP, covering topics in greater depth and adding material we had to skip over. The remaining portion of the course is new material. If you’re coming in having taken OS in a previous semester with Jae, you’ll already know some of the material, but not enough that the class will be redundant.

Since ASP and OS are complementary, it’s still very worth it to take ASP after OS. You’ll already have an appreciation for the tricky implementation details the operating system hides behind various interfaces and you’ll learn how to use those interfaces to write userspace software. Here’s just one exciting example: in OS, you learn how the kernel uses paging to implement a virtual memory system and about various related syscalls (e.g., brk, mmap). In ASP, you’ll learn how to implement a userspace malloc library that uses the kernel’s virtual memory system interface and enables userspace programs to dynamically allocate memory without having to directly invoke syscalls or think about paging!