Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Objectives At the completion of this subject students should understand modern operating systems and equipment architectures.
Synopsis Review of computer architecture: address modes, processor modes, memory protection schemes, virtual memory, parallel processors. Advanced design issues: general vs special purpose registers, orthogonal and complex instruction sets, microcode, caches and pipelines. RISC. Review of operating system concepts: architecture, components, concurrent processes, process communication, polling interrupt driven processes, scheduling, I/O, multi-user systems, security and privileges. Current operating systems: widely used operating systems, such as UNIX, OS/MVS, OS/2, VAX/VMS. Operating system extensions: X-windows, Microsoft Windows, Presentation Manager, Macintosh user interface. Standardisation activities: Posix, X-open, SAA.
Assessment Examination (2 hours): 50% + Practical work: 50%