Lecture Week 8: Exam Week

Course Meetup: Tuesday, Mar. 16

The next course meetup at on Tuesday, Mar. 16 at 2:00pm on Zoom and will be a short Q&A-only meetup. We will use the same Zoom link for all course meetups (you can find it in Compass 2g as the announcement for this course).

Upcoming: Midterm Exam on Thursday, Mar. 18

The course midterm exam is on Thursday, March 18. You will access the exam on Compass 2g and then have two hours to complete the exam. I’ll send you an e-mail Wednesday night as a reminder. :)

  • You can use any resource EXCEPT other people. You can use Google, the course notes, the textbook readings, and anything that is not talking to another person.
  • The exam will be several open-ended questions where you will write about how the functionality or design of the operating system. Questions will source the lecture videos, course textbook, and MPs.
  • You will submit your answers as PDF file. You can generate your PDF using any tool you desire.
  • (Note: Due to the exam, all office hours will not be held on March 18 since we cannot answer questions about content that might be on the exam.)

Sample Midterm Questions:

  • Q: We have discussed how to use the test-and-set instruction to implement a lock on a uniprocessor in the class. Can we use the test-and-set instruction to implement a lock on a multiprocessor environment [2 points]? Explain why or why not [3 points].

  • Q: We discuss Linux’s Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) in the class. What does fairness mean in CFS [1 point]? Is CFS really “completely” fair? If not, design a situation where we get an advantage over another process. [4 points]

Lecture Topics and Videos

The topics come from both lecture videos and reading from the course textbook:

  1. Exam Week - Message from Prof. Wade

Assignments

MPs

  • MP2, due on Mar. 22

Reading Selection from Systems Research (Required for 4CR only)

(No 4CR readings this week - midterm week! 🎉)