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Keep pace with the fast-developing world of operating systems

Open-source operating systems, virtual machines, and clustered computing are among the leading fields of operating systems and networking that are rapidly changing. With substantial revisions and organizational changes, Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne’s Operating System Concepts, Eighth Edition remains as current and relevant as ever, helping you master the fundamental concepts of operating systems while preparing yourself for today’s emerging developments.

As in the past, the text brings you up to speed on core knowledge and skills, including:

• What operating systems are, what they do, and how they are designed and constructed
• Process, memory, and storage management
• Protection and security
• Distributed systems
• Special-purpose systems

Beyond the basics, the Eight Edition sports substantive revisions and organizational changes that clue you in to such cutting-edge developments as open-source operating systems, multi-core processors, clustered computers, virtual machines, transactional memory, NUMA, Solaris 10 memory management, Sun’s ZFS file system, and more. New to this edition is the use of a simulator to dynamically demonstrate several operating system topics.

Best of all, a greatly enhanced WileyPlus, a multitude of new problems and programming exercises, and other enhancements to this edition all work together to prepare you enter the world of operating systems with confidence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48223 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.50" h x 7.20" w x 9.90" l, 3.25 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 992 pages

From the Back Cover
Keep pace with the fast-developing world of operating systems

Open-source operating systems, virtual machines, and clustered computing are among the leading fields of operating systems and networking that are rapidly changing. With substantial revisions and organizational changes, Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne’s Operating System Concepts, Eighth Edition remains as current and relevant as ever, helping you master the fundamental concepts of operating systems while preparing yourself for today’s emerging developments.

As in the past, the text brings you up to speed on core knowledge and skills, including:

• What operating systems are, what they do, and how they are designed and constructed
• Process, memory, and storage management
• Protection and security
• Distributed systems
• Special-purpose systems

Beyond the basics, the Eight Edition sports substantive revisions and organizational changes that clue you in to such cutting-edge developments as open-source operating systems, multi-core processors, clustered computers, virtual machines, transactional memory, NUMA, Solaris 10 memory management, Sun’s ZFS file system, and more. New to this edition is the use of a simulator to dynamically demonstrate several operating system topics.

Best of all, a greatly enhanced WileyPlus, a multitude of new problems and programming exercises, and other enhancements to this edition all work together to prepare you enter the world of operating systems with confidence.

About the Author
Abraham Silberschatz is the Sidney J. Weinberg Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Yale University. Prior to joining Yale, he was the Vice President of the Information Sciences Research Center at Bell Laboratories. Prior to that, he held a chaired professorship in the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

Professor Silberschatz is an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. He received the 2002 IEEE Taylor L. Booth Education Award, the 1998 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award, and the 1997 ACM SIGMOD Contribution Award. In recognition of his outstanding level of innovation and technical excellence, he was awarded the Bell Laboratories President's Award for three different Projects -- the QTM Project (1998), the DataBlitz Project (1999), and the NetInventory Project (2004).

Professor Silberschatz' writings have appeared in numerous ACM and IEEE publications and other professional conferences and journals. He is a coauthor of the textbook Database System Concepts. He has also written Op-Ed articles for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Hartford Courant, among others.

Peter Baer Galvin is the chief technologist for Corporate Technologies (www.cptech.com), a computer facility reseller and integrator. Before that, Mr. Galvin was the systems manager for Brown University's Computer Science Department. He is also Sun columnist for ;login: magazine. Mr. Galvin has written articles for Byte and other magazines, and has written columns for SunWorld and SysAdmin magazines. As a consultant and trainer, he has given talks and taught tutorials on security and system administration worldwide.

Greg Gagne is chair of the Computer Science department at Westminster College in Salt Lake City where he has been teaching since 1990. In addition to teaching operating systems, he also teaches computer networks, distributed systems, and software engineering. He also provides workshops to computer science educators and industry professionals.

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
A sound introductory text
By wiredweird
This provides a solid introduction to the basics of operating system (OS) internals. After an introductory section, this covers the major subsystems in an orderly progression: processes, memory, storage, protection, distributed systems, and special purpose systems. Although I might quibble with some of the ordering, (e.g., virtual memory vis a vis process management), this gives a firm foundation for anyone teaching introductory OS internals. As an aside, instructors should also be aware of the additional support they'll find at the book's web site.

I have no real objections to this book, but find that some of its emphasis won't suit all readers. For example, 99% of all processors don't run Windows or Linux. Instead, they run your DVD player, car air bags, microwave, digital watch, and just about everything else with a power cord or battery. Engineering students headed for embedded system development will need supplementary material. Also, like every other undergrad text I know, this underplays the critical importance of standards in everything from APIs and file system structures to network protocols and safe coding guideline.

I've taught from this book and from Tanenbaum and, to tell the truth, have no strong preference between the two. They present comparable material at roughly the same level, both offer good case studies, and both offer on-line support to students and instructors. Each outweighs the other on specific topics but, on the whole, that seems to balance out. I note that some reviewers object to this book's level. To them, I can only say: that's life. OS development is at least ten times as hard as developing mainstream applications (as measured by programmers' output of debugged code), so it will require some programming knowledge to follow discussions of OS internals. Railing against obviously important prerequisites says more about the speaker than about the book.

- wiredweird

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Great Book
By Chris Mcclanahan
Although I had to buy this book for a class, I do enjoy reading it. The book stays current by focusing on modern multi-core processors, and relating most concepts to Linux, Windows, and Solaris (plus sometimes others) operating systems. It is fairly easy to read, and there are programming exercises at the end of each chapter to highlight concepts. This book will definitely get your feet wet when learning operating system concepts.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Wish it could have more examples
By H. Bagai
This book is VERY abstract. It's like learning a computer without actually having it. It tries to cover many concepts related to operating systems, but because of that no space left for a real life applications or examples. A simplest way they describe a process or a thread in this book is to draw a rectangle, name it process, draw another rectangle, name it CPU, put an arrow in between and you are done. And this is like that throughout the book and throughout all the concepts they are trying to explain. Very poor explanation and no examples at all. You will find challenging exercises at the end of each chapter, but you will not find any answers in the chapter itself. Each chapter simply gives you an idea about some operating system concept but how it actually work is up to you to figure it out. Text is very formal and hard to understand; they will confuse you even with simple concepts. I used to google many topics and found a much better and meaningful explanation online that I immediately understood and even taught others. Most of the projects are shortly described with little help on how to do it and no warnings if there is a chance on crashing a kernel, for example. I crashed mine, no big deal.

And don't expect to learn anything specific to UNIX or Windows, Solaris, or AIX, for example, as they do not go into that depth, only slightly they will cover how Windows handles that, how Solaris handles that.. blah.
Not worth of reading it, but had to have it as my textbook.