[Haifux] new Technion course: Operating Systems Engineering

[Shachar Shemesh]

On 24/01/11 11:44, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:
> Shachar Shemesh<shachar at shemesh.biz>  wrote:
>
>    
>> On the one hand, this is an extremely interesting course. On the
>> other hand, it sounds like a HUGE amount of work for just 4 points.
>>      
> You know what they say, no pain, no gain. This will be the sort of
> course that puts a beard on your face.
>
>    
Don't get me wrong. Had I still been a student, I'd take that class in a 
blink of an eye. I'm just worried that students will take it without 
realizing just how much work it is. This is the type of project *I*, at 
my current experience level, would have to work relatively hard in order 
to complete.
>> Is the platform Intel, or something saner (say, ARM, PPC, MC680x0
>> or, come to think of it, just about any other CPU)?
>>      
> The platform is good ol' x86 because (1) everyone has one and (2)
> whatever you learn in this course will be immediately applicable in
> the real world.
>    
It also has a horrific assembly, as well as a "too many layers" MMU 
which revives that segmented addresses everyone have been working so 
hard to forget ever existed.

ARM, on the other hand, is (1) reasonable and straight forward assembly, 
and even reasonable MMU (2) has readily available emulators for all 
platforms and (3) is also fairly immediately applicable in the real 
world, arguably more so than X86.

Let's put it this way. The chances a CS graduate will be asked to write 
an ARM based BSP are much higher than the chances she'll be asked to 
write an X86 based one.

Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com