Module content

Indicative content includes the following:

Introduction to Operating Systems
Process Management: allocation of resources, context switching
Process Scheduling
Threads vs Processes
Threads Programming
Concurrency Mechanisms such as synchronization, scheduling, and deadlock
Memory Management Concepts such as linking, dynamic memory allocation, dynamic address translation, virtual memory, and demand paging
Memory Management programming and profiling
File Management Concepts: storage devices, disk management and scheduling, directories, protection, and crash recovery
File Management Programming
I/O Concepts and Programming

Assessment pattern

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate that they have achieved the module learning outcomes.

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

• A open-book mid-term class test, to be done on computer in the Lab session. This addresses LO1 and LO2.


• An individual coursework the require programming skills and ability to solve problems. This addresses LO3 and LO4. The feedback on the coursework will be given to the students within 3 weeks after the submission deadline.

Formative assessment and feedback
Lecture slides are used extensively in the lectures with each lecture consisting of a number of slides explaining the theory and showing the examples. Solutions to lab exercises are explained during the lab session and provided to the students as part of preparation for the test and coursework.

Module aims

• Introduce the basic principles of Operating Systems and computer architectures coupled together with aspects like process management, memory management, file systems, I/O subsystems, etc.
• Practical application of OS principles by examining case studies in a chosen platform
• Develop the students' knowledge of programming to support an interest in lower level programming to contribute to OS development, or use the acquired skills to be highly skilled programmers in higher level user application development

Learning outcomes

Attributes Developed

C - Cognitive/analytical

K - Subject knowledge

T - Transferable skills

P - Professional/Practical skills

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:

• help students understand the distinctive features of various operating systems design decisions;


• demonstrate the fundamental applications of OS features in programming higher level user applications;


• provide the foundations on which students can build in order to be able to participate in OS development subsequently;


• enable students to design higher level applications more efficiently by being aware of the impact the OS has on managing the access to the underlying hardware and other resources.

The learning and teaching methods include:

• Lectures (11 weeks at 2 hours) using detailed lecture slides and interactive quizzes (e.g., Poll Anywhere) to gauge the students’ understanding.


• Labs/Tutorials (11 weeks at 2 hours) applying learnt knowledge from lectures to solve related problems.

Students are expected to spend time outside of the contact hours on self-study to prepare and revise lecture, lab and tutorial material

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: COM1032