Silberschatz: Operating Systems Concepts, 6/e Windows XP Update Edition, the best selling introductory text in the market, continues to provide a solid theoretical foundation for understanding operating systems. The 6/e Update Edition offers improved conceptual coverage, added content to bridge the gap between concepts and actual implementations and a new chapter on the newest Operating System to capture the attention of critics, consumers, and industry alike: Windows XP.
* Brand new chapter on the newest operating system, Windows XP.
* Brand new chapter on Threads has been added and includes coverage of Pthreads and Java threads.
* Brand new chapter on Windows 2000 replaces Windows NT.
* Out with the old, in with the new! All code examples have been rewritten and are now in C.
* Client-server models and NFS coverage has been moved to an earlier part of the text.
* More, more, more... The sixth edition now offers increased coverage of small footprint operating systems such as PalmOS and real-time operating systems.
* Updated! Core material in every chapter has been updated, as has coverage of Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.
Operating systems are large and complex, and yet must function with near-absolute reliability--that's why they're a class unto themselves in the field of software development. Since its first release 20 years ago, "the dinosaur book"--
Operating System Concepts by Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, and Greg Gagne--has been a valuable reference for designers and implementers of operating systems. The newly released sixth edition of this book maintains the volume's authority with new sections on thread management, distributed processes, and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). There's also information on the workings of the latest crop of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows 2000, Linux, FreeBSD, and compact operating systems for handheld devices.
This book is concerned with the design of operating systems, which is to say it enumerates the problems that pop up in the creation of efficient systems and explores alternative ways of dealing with them, detailing the advantages and shortcomings of each. For example, in their chapter on scheduling CPU activity, the authors explain several algorithms (first-come, first-served, and round-robin scheduling, among others) for allocating the capacity of single and multiple processors among jobs. They highlight the relative advantages of each, and explain how several real-life operating systems solve the problem. They then present the reader with exercises (this book is essentially a university textbook) that inspire thought and discussion. --David Wall
Topics covered: The problems faced by designers of system software for electronic computers, and strategies that have been developed over the past 20 years to address (and, in some cases, solve) them. Problems of CPU scheduling, memory allocation, paging, processes and threads, storage management, distributed processes and storage mechanisms, and security are all discussed thoroughly and with many authoritative references.
