CSEN 383: Schedule (Fall 2026)
| Syllabus | Schedule |
Subject to change. Camino is authoritative for any change announced in class. Textbook readings are due on the week they are listed under. Read each assigned paper during the week in which it is listed. OSTEP = Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces.
All labs are released on a Thursday and due two weeks later, on a Thursday.
Week by week
| Week | Date | Topic | Reading | Due / quizzes / exams |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tue, 9/22 | Course Overview; OS Organization | OSTEP 2 | |
| 1 | Thu, 9/24 | xv6 Overview; Processes and Threads | OSTEP 4–6; xv6 book 1–2 | Lab 1 out |
| 2 | Tue, 9/29 | Virtual Memory I | PagedAttention | |
| 2 | Thu, 10/1 | Virtual Memory II | OSTEP 13, 18, 19 | |
| 3 | Tue, 10/6 | Kernel Extensibility I | Quiz 1 | |
| 3 | Thu, 10/8 | Kernel Extensibility II | Exokernel | Lab 1 due |
| 4 | Tue, 10/13 | Scheduling I | OSTEP 7, 8 | Quiz 2 · Lab 2 out |
| 4 | Thu, 10/15 | Scheduling II | OSTEP 9, 10; Lottery Scheduling | |
| 5 | Tue, 10/20 | Midterm Review | Quiz 3 (take home) | |
| 5 | Thu, 10/22 | Midterm 1 | ||
| 6 | Tue, 10/27 | Synchronization and Multicore OS | Multikernel | Lab 2 due · Lab 3 out |
| 6 | Thu, 10/29 | Scalability to Many Cores | ||
| 7 | Tue, 11/3 | I/O, Storage and File Systems | OSTEP 37, 39, 40, 41 | Quiz 4 |
| 7 | Thu, 11/5 | File Systems II | ||
| 8 | Tue, 11/10 | Cloud Storage; Intro to eBPF | OSTEP 48, 49; GFS | Lab 3 due · Lab 4 out |
| 8 | Thu, 11/12 | Virtualization | Xen | |
| 9 | Tue, 11/17 | Security and Isolation | Quiz 5 | |
| 9 | Thu, 11/19 | Slack day / finish remaining material | ||
| — | 11/23–27 | Thanksgiving — no class, no activity | ||
| 10 | Tue, 12/1 | Review and Wrap-up | Quiz 6 · Lab 4 due | |
| 10 | Thu, 12/3 | Midterm 2 | ||
| — | 12/7–12/9 | Finals week — no activity |
Papers
Six papers to read for the quarter. Read each paper during the week listed below. Papers will be examined on quizzes alongside the course slides.
| Read during | Paper |
|---|---|
| Week 2 (Sep 29–Oct 1) | Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention (SOSP 2023) |
| Week 3 (Oct 6–8) | Exokernel: An Operating System Architecture for Application-Level Resource Management (SOSP 1995) |
| Week 4 (Oct 13–15) | Lottery Scheduling: Flexible Proportional-Share Resource Management (OSDI 1994) |
| Week 6 (Oct 27–29) | The Multikernel: A New OS Architecture for Scalable Multicore Systems (SOSP 2009) |
| Week 7 (Nov 3–5) | The Google File System (SOSP 2003) |
| Week 8 (Nov 10–12) | Xen and the Art of Virtualization (SOSP 2003) |