About Book:

     Operating Systems bridge the gap between the hardware of computer systems and the user.  Consequently, they are strongly influenced by hardware technology and architecture, both of which have advanced at a breathtaking pace since the first computers emerged in the 1940s.  Many changes have been quantitative; the speed of processors, memories, and devices has been increasing continuously, whereas their size, cost, and power consumption have been decreasing.  Many qualitative changes have also occurred.  For example, personal computers with sophisticated input, output, and storage devices are now omnipresent; most are connected either to local area networks or the Internet.  These advances have dramatically reshaped the world within which operating systems shall exist and cooperate.  Instead of managing a single processor, controlling a collection of local memories and I/O devices, contemporary operating systems are required to manage highly parallel, distributed, and increasingly more heterogeneous configurations.

     This book is an introduction to operating systems, appropriate for computer science or computer engineering majors at the junior or senior level.  One objective is to respond to a major paradigm shift from single-processor to distributed and parallel computer systems, especially in a world where it is no longer possible to draw a clear line between operating systems for centralized environments and those for distributed ones.  Although most of the book is devoted to traditional topics, we extend and integrate these with basic ideas in the operating system.