CS3650: Computer Systems

Announcements

Course information

• Course Number: CS3650
• Session 2:
  • Instructor: Cheng Tan
  • Lectures: Mon/Wed 2:50 pm - 4:30 pm
  • Room: Cargill Hall 097
• Session 3:
  • Instructor: Peter Desnoyers
  • Lectures: Tue 11:45 am - 1:25 pm, Thur 2:50 pm - 4:30 pm
  • Room: Snell Engineering Center 108
• Teaching Assistants:
  • Head TA: Shuwen Sun
  • TAs: Bhavik Bhatt, Peng Gu, Tarun Malviya, Siddhant Mane, Abhijith Nair, Maxwell Nurzia, Hephzibah Saidu, Effy Wang, Sumit Pagar
• Staff mailing list: cs3650sp24-staff@ccs.neu.edu
• Office hours:
  • See Piazza this post

Course structure

• The lectures will cover topics of computer systems and operating systems. See schedule for session 2 and session 3.
• The labs are an important part of the course. See them here.
• The assignments are intended to reinforce the contents of lectures. They will be posted on the assignment page.
• The announcements will be posted here.
• The policies and grading for this course is here.

Course goals

The main goal of this course is to teach you how to think from the prospective of a system developer and give you some tools to address system related problems. After completing this course, you should realize that there is no magic in computers and you should have the confidence to solve most computer system problems (given enough time). Further, this course aims to let you try the workflow and environment of system development, including tools like Linux command line, vim, and git. Of course, you will learn a series of skills through practice. Coding is a critical part of this course and, hopefully, you will find it rewarding.

Textbooks

• OSTEP: Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces, by Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau, August 2018, edition 1.00.
• HOSW: How Operating Systems Work, by Peter Desnoyers, Fall 2020 edition.

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to previous CS3650 (23 spring).