EEL702: Computer System Software

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Instructors: Sumantra Dutta Roy (SDR) and Sumeet Agarwal (SA)
4 credits (3-0-2)
Pre-requisites: CSL201 & EEL308
Overlaps with: CSL728
I Semester 2013–14
Tu W F 8–8:50, II-325

This course covers a number of different strands. It is primarily meant to be an overview of the tools and techniques that go into developing systems software, which is software that forms the interface between user applications and the computer system. We will cover C and other programming/scripting tools which are typically used to develop such software. A substantial chunk of the course will be devoted to the theory and practice of developing programming language compilers. We will also cover some aspects of software modelling and verification, programming paradigms, and touch upon modern distributed systems software such as Hadoop.

Evaluation components

• Minor I: 15% [paper] [solutions]
• Minor II: 15% [paper] [solutions]
• Major: 30% [paper] [shell scripting solution]
• Assignments: 35% [1] [2] [3]
• Class participation: 5%

Planned outline

• John E. Hopcroft, Rajeev Motwani, and Jeffrey D. Ullman. Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation. Prentice Hall, 2007.
• Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman. Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS). [Free online]
• Byron Gottfried and Jitender Chhabra. Programming with C (Schaum's Outlines Series). McGraw-Hill, 2010.
• Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (CPTT). Addison-Wesley, 1986.
• Fredrick J. Hill and Gerald R. Peterson. Introduction to the Theory of Switching Circuits. McGraw-Hill, 1965.
• Zvi Kohavi and Niraj K. Jha. Switching and Finite Automata Theory. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Michael Huth and Mark Ryan. Logic in Computer Science. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• Keith Schwarz's CS143 Compilers course at Stanford.