Chapter 1: Introduction and History

 Where does the operating system fit in

a computing system?
 What does the operating system
achieve?
 What are the general OS functions?
 Who needs an operating system?
 What is operating system?
 History of operating system
Where does the OS fit in?

 The layer between User programs

the hardware and
Operating system interface
the user program
(application Operating system
programs). Hardware interface
Hardware
 OS is a software
system that directly
interacts with the
hardware.
 Hardware
 CPU, registers, disks, monitors, etc
 Hardware interface
 the instruction set
 other things like interrupt – anything that a programmer
needs to know in order to write programs that use the
hardware.
 Operating system
 Implements the OS interface + resource management
 OS interface
 The enhanced instruction set: hardware instruction set +
special instructions called “traps” or “system calls”.
 User programs:
 Instructions in the enhanced instruction set + data
 Question: How many of you have dealt with
the OS (enhanced) interface before?
 One more layer between a typical user program
and the OS interface, the programming
environment (compiler + run time library).
 cout << “hello world.\n”  write(1, “hello world.\n”, 13);

User programs
programming environment
Operating system interface
Operating system
Hardware interface
Hardware
What does the OS achieve?
 Make it easy to write programs
 Add more powerful instructions to the hardware
instruction set.
 What kind of instructions are added?
 Common functions used by many different applications.
 E.g. write (fileno, buf, len);

 Resource virtualization
 E.g. the illusion of Infinite memory.
What does the OS achieve?
 Make it easy to run programs
 How does a program run on the raw machine?
 The program is in memory, starting from program
counter (pc), run one instruction, goto the next
instruction, run until the halt instruction.
 How do you run a program?
 g++ helloworld.cpp and then a.out.
 The OS must fill the gap between how
you run a program and how the
hardware runs a program. The OS must
be able to:
 Take the user command (g++, a.out, etc) – shell
 Find the executable file (g++ or a.out) – File system
 Load the executable into memory – memory management
 Set the registers properly (e.g. pc = starting address of the
executable)
 When there are multiple programs running, the OS must
make each program feel like it solely owns the whole
machine (CPU, memory, registers) – virtual machine for
each process
 Manage processes.
 OS functionality: Implements the OS interface
+ resource management
What does an OS achieve?
 Ithides the complexity and limitations of
hardware (hardware interface) and
creates a simpler, more powerful
abstraction (OS interface).
Hardware reality vs. OS
abstraction
Reality Abstraction
A single CPU Multiple CPUs
Limited RAM capacity Infinite capacity
Mechanical disk Memory speed access
Insecure and Reliable and secure
unreliable networks
Many physical A single machine
machines
What are the general OS
functions?
 Standard services
 Screen display, disk accesses, etc
 Coordination among applications
 Protection, correctness, efficiency, and
fairness
Coordination
 Example: Protection
 Applications should not crash one another
 Address space: all memory addresses that an
application can touch.
 Address space for one process is separated from
address space for another process and from the OS.
 Applications should not crash the OS
 Dual-mode operations
 Kernel mode: some instructions can only be executed by
the OS (must be executed with a kernel mode).
 User mode: an application can only access its own
address space
 Examples of kernel mode instructions?
What is the operating system?
 OS is the software layer between the
hardware and user programs.
 OS is the ultimate API.
 OS is the first program that runs when the
computer boots up.
 OS is the program that is always running.
 OS is the resource manager.
 OS is the creator of the virtual machine.
Resources managed by OS
 CPU: process management
 Memory: memory management
 Storage: storage and file management
 I/O devices: I/O management
Who needs OS?
 OS makes a computer easier to use
 All general purpose computers need OS.
Abetter question: Who does not need
OS?
 Some very specialized systems that
usually do one thing (OS can be
embedded in the application).
 Microwave oven control
 MP3 players, etc.
 History of OS: Change!
1980 2000 Factor
Speed CPU 1 MIPS 1,000 MIPS 1,000
Memory 500 ns 2 ns 250
Disk 18 ms 2 ms 9
Modem 300 bits/sec 56 Kbits/sec 200
Capacity Memory 64 Kbytes 128 Mbytes 2,000
Disk 1 Mbytes 6 Gbytes 6,000
Cost Per MIP $100K <= $1 100,000
Other Address bits 8 64 8
Users/machine 10s <=1 .01
History Phase I: Hardware
Expensive, Humans Cheap
 Hardware:mainframes
 OS: human operators
 Handle one job (a unit of processing) at a
time
 Computer time
wasted while
operators walk
around the
machine room
OS Design Goal
 Efficient use of the hardware
 Batch system: collects a batch of jobs
before processing them and printing out
results
 Job collection, job processing, and printing out
results can occur concurrently
 Multiprogramming: multiple programs
can run concurrently
 Example: I/O-bound jobs and CPU-bound jobs
History Phase II: Hardware
Cheap, Humans Expensive
 Hardware: terminals
 OS design goal: more efficient use of
human resources
 Timesharing systems: each user can
afford to own
terminals to interact
with machines
History Phase III: Hardware Very
Cheap, Humans Very Expensive
 Hardware: personal computers
 OS design goal: allowing a user to
perform many tasks at the same time
 Multitasking: the ability to run multiple
programs on the same machine at the
same time
 Multiprocessing: the ability
to use multiple processors
on the same machine
History Phase IV: Distributed
Systems
 Hardware: computers with networks
 OS design goal: ease of resource
sharing among machines
The Bottom Line

OS designs need to adapt to changing

technology