MPCS 52030 Operating Systems (Spring 2026)

Section 1
Instructor(s) Nicholson, Anthony (ajn)
Location None
Meeting Times
Fulfills Core Systems Elective

Syllabus

This course provides an introduction to fundamental concepts in operating systems, including processes and threads, interprocess communication and synchronization, memory management, segmentation, paging, linking and loading, scheduling, file systems, and input/output. This course revolves around the implementation of an x86 operating system kernel, divided into four separate projects, which accounts for the majority of the grade. Students will develop these projects in pairs. To successfully complete these projects, students must understand fundamental concepts in operating system design and implementation, which are provided through the lectures. There will also be a midterm and a final.
 
The projects use the Pintos instructional kernel, which already implements some of the low-level functionality of the kernel, allowing the students to concentrate on implementing higher-level operating system functionality, such as thread management, memory management, etc.
while still allowing them to peek under the hood.

The project is divided into four parts:
  1. Threads: Students are given a minimally functional thread system, which they will extend to gain a better understanding of synchronization problems.
  2. User Programs: Pintos already supports loading and running user programs, but no I/O or interactivity is possible. Students will enable programs to interact with the OS via system calls.
  3. Virtual Memory: Pintos is limited by the machine’s main memory size. In this project, students will remove this limitation by implementing a virtual memory management system.
  4. File Systems: Students will improve Pintos’ basic file system.
The project involves large amounts of low-level C programming, and students are assumed to already be comfortable with C Programming.

Course Prerequisites

Student must meet one of the following requirements:
- B+ or higher in MPCS 51040 - C Programming
- B+ or higher in MPCS 51100 - Advanced Programming
- A- or higher in MPCS 51044 - C++ for Advanced Programming (students who have only taken this class should review C before taking OS)

Students must have a B+ or higher in MPCS 52011 Introduction to Computer Systems or MPCS 51082 Introduction to Unix Systems.

Other Prerequisites

Not approved for CAPP or MACSS students.

This course requires competency in Unix and Linux. If you attended the MPCS Unix Bootcamp you covered the required material. If you did not, please review the UChicago CS Student Resource Guide here: https://uchicago-cs.github.io/student-resource-guide/.

Course request information for non-MPCS students: https://masters.cs.uchicago.edu/student-resources/non-mpcs-student-course-requests/

Overlapping Classes

This class is scheduled at a time that does not conflict with any other classes this quarter.

Eligible Programs

MS in Computational Analysis in Public Policy (Year 2) MA in Computational Social Science (Year 2) Bx/MS in Computer Science (Option 2: Professionally-oriented - CS Majors) Bx/MS in Computer Science (Option 3: Profesionally-oriented - Non-CS Majors) Masters Program in Computer Science