Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

Principles of Computer Systems

Winter 2021

Stanford University

Computer Science Department

Instructors:

Chris Gregg and Nick Troccoli

PDF of this presentation

 

• What is this class all about?
  • Principles of System Design: CS110 touches on seven big principles
    • Abstraction
    • Modularity and Layering
    • Naming and Name Resolution
    • Caching
    • Virtualization
    • Concurrency
    • Client-server request-and-response

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

• Let's take a look a the first three of these and jump right in
  • Principles of System Design: CS110 touches on seven big principles
    • Abstraction
    • Modularity and Layering
    • Naming and Name Resolution

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

• ​Abstraction separates behavior from implementation.

• Take a look at the result of the linux file list command, ls -1 to the left.
• There is a file list, but this is simply an abstraction
  • How are files stored on the computer?
  • If everything is a 0 or a 1 to a computer, there must be some translation, and abstraction.
  • There are an infinite number of ways to store files (your second assignment will investigate one!), but the behavior of a file system is well-defined.

• Let's take a look a the first three of these and jump right in
  • Principles of System Design: CS110 touches on seven big principles
    • Abstraction
    • Modularity and Layering
    • Naming and Name Resolution

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

• ​Abstraction separates behavior from implementation.

• What kinds of things does an operating system designer need to think about to design a file system?
  • How are the files stored? Assuming that it is in non-volatile memory (e.g., a hard drive, or SSD), what is the actual low-level form of the file storage. Keep in mind that the files must be located when required!
  • What is the relationship between a file's name location and its data location? This can be very different!
  • Are small files stored differently than large files?
  • How are files deleted so that the space doesn't go to waste?
  • Can two filenames point to the same file?
  • Does file data share the same space on the disk as metadata? (think: Heap Allocator...)

• These are just some of the questions that must be answered. But, no matter how they are answered, the behavior of the system to the user should remain constant. There are many different varieties of Unix file systems, but this should be transparent to the user through the use of abstraction.

• Let's take a look a the first three of these and jump right in
  • Principles of System Design: CS110 touches on seven big principles
    • Abstraction
    • Modularity and Layering
    • Naming and Name Resolution

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

• ​Abstraction separates behavior from implementation.

• If we add the -i flag for our directory list, we can dig a bit more.
• It turns out that files on a Linux system have an associated inode, which is a form of modularity called layering. For a computer, it is easier to keep track of a file with a number, but for a human, the textual name is better.
• This was a decision that the Linux file system designers made! It actually bridges the abstraction layer a bit because the user can access these inodes.

• Let's take a look a the first three of these and jump right in
  • Principles of System Design: CS110 touches on seven big principles
    • Abstraction
    • Modularity and Layering
    • Naming and Name Resolution

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

• ​Abstraction separates behavior from implementation.

• The distinction between inodes and filenames is also an example of naming and name resolution.
• Given a file's name (and, more concretely, its path), there has to be code that can figure out what the inode is that is associated with that particular path.
• This is non-trivial, especially if you want the lookup to be fast (which you do!)

• Chris Gregg (cgregg@stanford.edu)
  • Electrical Engineering undergrad Johns Hopkins, Master's of Education, Harvard, Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, University of Virginia
  • Lecturer in CS, teaching CS 106B/X, CS 107/107E, CS 110, CS208E, CS 298.
  • At Stanford since 2016, at Tufts prior, and high school teaching prior to that.
  • I love the CS 110 material!
    • It is challenging, yet interesting, and it is a new window into systems that you haven't yet seen in the CS curriculum. I guarantee that you will write programs of the sort you have not written before.
  • I love to tinker
    • I'm always happy to chat about Arduino / Raspberry Pi / iOS apps you are working on

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems: Instructors

• Nick Troccoli (troccoli@stanford.edu)
  • ​Computer Science undergrad and grad at Stanford
  • Lecturer in CS, teaching CS106, 107, 110
  • CS110 was one of my favorite classes!
  • Looking forward to meeting all of you!

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems: Instructors

To reach both Nick and Chris:

cs110-win21-instructors@lists.stanford.edu (also listed on the course homepage)

 

Please use this email if you need to contact the instructors for anything course related.

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems: Instructors

Companion Class: CS110A

• CS110A is an extra 1-unit “Pathfinders” or “ACE” section with additional course support, practice and instruction.
• Meets for an additional weekly section and has additional review sessions
•  Will meet 10:30am-11:50am PDT starting week 2
• Entry by application - see the course website for details

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems: Instructors

• Staff and Students
  • ​​​181 students as of January 10, 2021
  • You should know C and C++ reasonably well so that you can...
    • write moderately complex programs
    • read and understand portions of large code bases
    • trace memory diagrams
  • You should be fluent with Unix, gcc, valgrind, and make as covered in CS107 or its equivalent.
  • graduate student CAs
    • Nick, Patrick, Ella, Raejoon, Thea, Semir
    • The CAs will hold office hours, lead lab sections, and grade your work

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

• Course Web Site: https://cs110.stanford.edu
  • Info about upcoming lectures, assignment handouts, discussion sections, and lecture slides
• Lectures
  • Except for today's lecture, all other lecture material will be recorded prior to class, and available on Canvas->Panopto Course Videos.
  • Each video will have a set of short quizzes that cover the material. The quizzes allow multiple attempts, and must be completed before regular lecture time. Each day's worth of lecture quizzes are weighted the same in aggregate (e.g., lecture 2's quizzes will account for the same amount of weight as all other lectures).
  • The recorded content will take approximately the same amount of time as an in-person lecture.
  • We will hold review sessions for the material covered in the videos on Mondays and Wednesdays during lecture time. There will be ample time for questions.
    • E.g., lecture 2 material has been posted and should be watched before Wednesday, and we will review it on Wednesday.
    • Review sessions are optional but we strongly suggest you attend them. They will be recorded.
    • Going forward, each Wed. we will post the videos/quizzes for the next Mon. + Wed.

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

• Online Forum
  • Peer-collaborative forum: Ed Stem
  • Best for course material discussions, course policy questions or general assignment questions (DON’T POST ASSIGNMENT CODE!)
• Office Hours
  • Nick, Chris and the CAs will hold office hours throughout the week, full schedule coming soon, starting 1/12.
  • CA's have been instructed to not look at code. Ever. (though this is relaxed a bit for the first assignment, only)
  • Best for group work, code/intricate debugging questions (with TAs only!) or longer course material discussions
• Contacting the instructors
  • We will publish an instructor email address for you to contact both Chris and Nick for course-related information. In the meantime, email us both at cgregg@stanford.edu and troccoli@stanford.edu.
  • Best for private matters (e.g. grading questions, OAE accommodations).

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

Two Textbooks

• First textbook is other half of CS107 textbook
  • "Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective", by Bryant and O'Hallaron
  • Stanford Bookstore stocks custom version of just the four chapters needed for CS110
• Second textbook is more about systems-in-the-large, less about implementation details
  • "Principles of Computer System Design: An Introduction", by Jerome H. Saltzer and M. Frans Kaashoek
  • Provided free-of-charge online, chapter by chapter. Not stocked at Stanford Bookstore by design. You can buy a copy of it from Amazon if you want.

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

Lecture Examples

Lectures will be driven by slides and coding examples, and all coding examples can be copied/cloned into local space so you can play and confirm they work properly

• Code examples will be developed and tested on the myth machines, which is where you'll complete all of your CS110 assignments
• The accumulation of all lecture examples will be housed in a git repository at /usr/class/cs110/lecture-examples, which you can initially git clone, and then subsequently git pull to get the newer examples as we check them in

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

Lecture Slides

We'll try to make the slides as comprehensive as possible, but working with the code yourself is going to teach you more.

• They are not a substitute for watching lecture
  • We go off script quite a bit and discuss high-level concepts, and you're responsible for anything that comes up in lecture

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

 

• CS 110 -- more specifically
  • Five main topics (more detail in a few slides):
    1. Unix Filesystems
    2. Multiprocessing (multiple processes running simultaneously)
    3. Signal Handling (sending a signal to a process)
    4. Multithreading (multiple threads in a single process running simultaneously)
    5. Networking Servers and Clients
  • There will be six assignments, with each assignment at least one week in duration
    1. C and C++ refresher
    2. Unix Filesystems
    3. Multiprocessing Warmup
    4. Multiprocessing: Stanford Shell
    5. Multithreading and ThreadPool
    6. Networking

Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems

• Overview of Linux Filesystems
  • Linux and C libraries for file manipulation: stat, struct stat, open, close, read, write, readdir, struct dirent, file descriptors, regular files, directories, soft and hard links, programmatic manipulation of them, implementation of ls, cp, find, and other core Unix utilities you probably never realized were plain old C programs
  • Naming, abstraction and layering concepts in systems as a means for managing complexity, blocks, inodes, inode pointer structure, inode as abstraction over blocks, direct blocks, indirect blocks, doubly indirect blocks, design and implementation of a file system
• Multiprocessing and Exceptional Control Flow
  • Introduction to multiprocessing, fork, waitpid, execvp, process ids, interprocess communication, context switches, user versus kernel mode, system calls and how their calling convention differs from those of normal functions
  • Protected address spaces, virtual memory, virtual to physical address mapping, scheduling
  • Concurrency versus parallelism, multiple cores versus multiple processors, concurrency issues with multiprocessing, signal masks

Course Syllabus

• Threading and Concurrency
  • Sequential programming, desire to emulate the real world within a single process using parallel threads, free-of-charge exploitation of multiple cores (two per myth machine, 12-16 per wheat machine, 16 per oat machine), pros and cons of threading versus forking
  • C++ threads, thread construction using function pointers, blocks, functors, join, detach, race conditions, mutex, IA32 implementation of lock and unlock, spinlock, busy waiting, preemptive versus cooperative multithreading, yield, sleep_for
  • Condition variables, condition_variable_any, rendezvous and thread communication, wait, notify_one, notify_all, deadlock, thread starvation
  • Semaphore concept and semaphore implementation, generalized counters, pros and cons of semaphore versus exposed condition_variable_any, thread pools, cost of threads versus processes
  • Active threads, blocked threads, ready threads, high-level implementation details of a thread manager, mutex, and condition_variable_any
  • Pure C alternatives via pthreads, pros and cons of pthreads versus C++'s thread package

Course Syllabus

• Networking and Distributed Systems
  • Client-server model, peer-to-peer model, telnet, protocols, request, response, stateless versus keep-alive connections, latency and throughput issues, gethostbyname, gethostbyaddr, IPv4 versus IPv6, struct sockaddr hierarchy of records, network-byte order
  • Ports, sockets, socket descriptors, socket, connect, bind, accept, read, read, simple echo server, time server, concurrency issues, spawning threads to isolate and manage single conversations
  • C++ layer over raw C I/O file descriptors, introduction to sockbuf and sockstream C++ classes (via socket++ open source project)
  • HTTP 1.0 and 1.1, header fields, GET, HEAD, POST, response codes, caching
  • MapReduce programming model, implementation strategies using multiple threads and multiprocessing
  • Nonblocking I/O, where normally slow system calls like accept, read, and write return immediately instead of blocking
    • select, epoll, and libev libraries all provide nonblocking I/O alternatives to maximize CPU time using a single thread of execution within a single process

Course Syllabus

Course Grade Breakdown:

10% Lecture Quizzes

65% Assignments

15% Assessments

10% Lab Section Attendance

Course Expectations

Programming Assignments (65%)

• 6 assignments - some are a single file, others are significant code bases to which you'll contribute.
  • You should always become familiar with the header files and the assignment handout before you start writing a single line of code.
• Late policy - every late day potentially costs you (read below why it's potentially)
  • If you submit...
    • on time: no penalty
    • up to 24 hours later: 90% cap
    • up to 48 hours later: 60% cap
  • No submissions accepted more than 48 hours late
  • Exception: first assignment must be submitted on time, no late days allowed
  • Extensions for exceptional circumstances must be approved by Nick and Chris. Please communicate with us! We are here to accommodate you as much as possible.
  •  Note: you must get 50% functionality on each assignment to pass the class.  If this becomes a concern for you, please reach out to Nick and Chris.

Course Expectations

Discussion Sections (10%)

• You'll also sign up for an 50-minute section to meet each week, on Zoom
• Mix of theoretical work, coding exercises and development exercises using gdb and valgrind
• Submit your section preferences anytime between Thurs. 1/14 and Sun. 1/17.  They are not first-come-first served.  The link will be posted on the course website.

Course Expectations

Assessments (15%)

• No traditional exams this quarter
• Instead: low-stakes, open book self-assessments wh opportunities to take a pulse on how well you understand the topics taught so far.
• 3 assessments at the end of weeks three, seven, and eight (see the course schedule for exact dates).
• Short, timed, assessments and you will have a window in which to take them over a weekend. Details will be provided closer to the first assessment.
• 5% per assessment
• If you have testing accommodations, please email Chris or Nick as soon as possible.

Course Expectations

• Please take the honor code seriously, because the CS Department does
  • Everything you submit for a grade is expected to be original work
  • Provide detailed citations of all sources and collaborations
  • The following are clear no-no's
    • Looking at another student's code
    • Showing another student your code
    • Discussing assignments in such detail that you duplicate a portion of someone else's code in your own program
    • Uploading your code to a public repository (e.g. github) so others can find it
      • If you'd like to upload your code to a private repository, you can do so on github or some other hosting service that provides free-of-charge private hosting
• Tutoring policy: tutoring is not appropriate for help with work that will be submitted for a grade.
• Honor Code Video: please watch to make sure you understand the Honor Code in CS110

Honor Code

• You should already be familiar with the Linux filesystem as a user. The filesystem uses a tree-based model to store files and directories of files. You can get details of a file in a particular directory with the ls command

Introduction to UNIX Filesystems

• You can get a more detailed listing  with the ls -al command:

• With this listing, there are two files listed as directories (d), "." and "..".  These stand for:
  • "." is the current directory
  • ".." is the parent directory
• The "rwx------" designates the permissions for a file or directory, with "r" for read permission, "w" for write permission, and "x" for execute permission (for runnable files).

Introduction to UNIX Filesystems

• There are actually three parts to the permissions line, each with the three permission types available:
  • rwx r-x r-x

 owner

               group 

                             other

Introduction to UNIX Filesystems

Introduction to UNIX Filesystems

Introduction to UNIX Filesystems

Introduction to UNIX Filesystems