Operating Systems Ii

The course analyses architectures, features, mechanisms, policies, and management of operating systems with respect to the management of the central memory, the input/output devices, the file systems, the user interface and the distributed operating systems for different information processing architectures (mono-processors, multi-processors, clusters, distributed systems, embedded systems) targeted to the main application areas (transactional systems, interactivity, multimedia, office automation, telecommunications, industrial control, robotics, embedded applications). This course is directed to deepen the competences in designing and managing operating systems, with specific reference to design techniques, configuration, and optimization with respect to the management of the central memory, the input/output devices, the file systems, the user interface and the distributed operating systems.

· Virtualization of the main memory: storage policies; architectural support; consistency, fault and software errors tolerance, security and protection; design of algorithms and data structures for main memory virtualization.

· Virtualization of the input/output devices: management mechanisms and policies for different kinds of devices and interfaces, clock, time ordering of events in distributed systems, coordination; disks; terminals; printers; special peripherals and operating systems' support for IT networks; real-time aspects, fault and software errors tolerance, security and protection; design of algorithms and data structures for input/output device virtualization.

· Abstraction of the representation of physical and information resources: files, file system, network and distributed file system, resources identification policies; consistency, caching, backup, fault and software errors tolerance, protection and access security, design of algorithms and data structures for resources abstraction.

· User interface: kinds of interpreters and user interfaces (programmed, text, graphics, multimedia, distributed, mobile agents); management mechanisms and policies for user interfaces; management and access security, fault and software errors tolerance, design of algorithms and data structures for the user interface.

· Operating systems for distributed architectures: processes execution, synchronization and communication between processes, deadlock management, devices management, file system management.