CPE 453: Written Assignment #1

• Chapter 2: 2.1, 2.19, 2.23
• Chapter 3: 3.6, 3.7, 3.9
• Chapter 4: 4.2, 4.4, 4.13
• And the following from "Operating Systems in Depth" by Doeppner:
  • Pg 31, Exercise 1
    • Explain how the notion of interrupts facilitated the implementation of time sharing.
  • Pg 31, Exercise 5
    • Explain the difference between an interrupt and a trap.
  • Pg 161, Exercise 7
    • Explain how it is that both the virtual-machine (Enterprise level) and microkernel approaches protect various portions of the operating system from one another.
  • Pg 89, Exercise 2 (I modified it.)
    • Write a function that does a certain amount of work performing a lengthy computation, such as incrementing a variable 10 billion times. Then compare the time taken by one thread doing all the work with the time taken by 10 threads each doing one-tenth of the work. Which ran faster? Can you explain why? How does the number of processors on your computer affect your result?