Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition [Hardcover]

Abraham Silberschatz (Author), Peter B. Galvin (Author), Greg Gagne (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471694665 | ISBN-13: 978-0471694663 | Publication Date: December 14, 2004 | Edition: 7th

Another defining moment in the evolution of operating systems
Small footprint operating systems, such as those driving the handheld devices that the baby dinosaurs are using on the cover, are just one of the cutting-edge applications you'll find in Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne's Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition.
By staying current, remaining relevant, and adapting to emerging course needs, this market-leading text has continued to define the operating systems course. This Seventh Edition not only presents the latest and most relevant systems, it also digs deeper to uncover those fundamental concepts that have remained constant throughout the evolution of today's operation systems. With this strong conceptual foundation in place, students can more easily understand the details related to specific systems.
New Adaptations
* Increased coverage of user perspective in Chapter 1.
* Increased coverage of OS design throughout.
* A new chapter on real-time and embedded systems (Chapter 19).
* A new chapter on multimedia (Chapter 20).
* Additional coverage of security and protection.
* Additional coverage of distributed programming.
* New exercises at the end of each chapter.
* New programming exercises and projects at the end of each chapter.
* New student-focused pedagogy and a new two-color design to enhance the learning process.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Another defining moment in the evolution of operating systems

Small footprint operating systems, such as those driving the handheld devices that the baby dinosaurs are using on the cover, are just one of the cutting-edge applications you’ll find in Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne’s Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition. 

By staying current, remaining relevant, and adapting to emerging course needs, this market-leading text has continued to define the operating systems course. This Seventh Edition not only presents the latest and most relevant systems, it also digs deeper to uncover those fundamental concepts that have remained constant throughout the evolution of today’s operation systems. With this strong conceptual foundation in place, students can more easily understand the details related to specific systems.

New Adaptations

• Increased coverage of user perspective in Chapter 1.
• Increased coverage of OS design throughout.
• A new chapter on real-time and embedded systems (Chapter 19).
• A new chapter on multimedia (Chapter 20).
• Additional coverage of security and protection.
• Additional coverage of distributed programming.
• New exercises at the end of each chapter.
• New programming exercises and projects at the end of each chapter.
• New student-focused pedagogy and a new two-color design to enhance the learning process.

About the Author

Abraham Silberschatz is a Professor of Computer Science at Yale university. Prior to joining Yale, he was the Vice President of t5he Information Sciences Research Center at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey. Prior5 to that, he held a chaired professorship in the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interest include operating systems, database systems, real-time systems storage systems, network management, and distributed systems.

In addition to his academic and industrial positions, Professor Silberschatz served as a member of the Biodiversity and Ecosystems Panel on President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, as an advisor for the National Science Foundation, and as a consultant for several private industry companies.

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, the 1997 ACM SIGMOD Contribution Award, and the IEEE Computer Society Outstanding Paper award for the article "Capability Manager", which appeared in the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. His 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.

Greg Gagne is chair of the Division of Computer Science and Mathematics 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, object-oriented programming, and data structures. He also provides workshops to computer science educators and industry professionals. Professor Gagne's current research interests include next-generation operating systems and distributed computing.

Peter Baer Galvin is the chief technologist for Corporate Technologies (www.cptech.com). Before that, Peter was the systems manager for Brown University's Computer Science Department. He is also contributing editor for SysAdmin magazine. Mr. Galvin has written articles for Byte and other magazines, and previously wrote the security column and systems administration column for ITWORLD. As a consultant and trainer, Peter has given talks and taught tutorials on security and system administration worldwide.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 921 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 7th edition (December 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471694665
• ISBN-13: 978-0471694663
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #24 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > APIs & Operating Environments
  • #69 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > C

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good high level view of how an OS works, December 8, 2005

By 

Comp Sc. Instructor "CSI" (TX, US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition (Hardcover)

Definetely targeted towards the sophomore/Junior level students. This book goes into generic concepts used by most operating systems - i.e., what happens when a program is loaded into memory? How do processes make system calls to the kernel, how is deadlock among several programs competing for the same resources resolved, what is the characteristics of real-time operating systems etc.

I have adopted this book for teaching the operating systems course. I find that students, in general, appreciate this book as it is very readable. I believe a good text book should have the following qualities: It should be light enough to read it in bed, the fonts should be large enough to not give a headache after an hour of reading, should be written in clear lucid style with plenty of figures and should have decent binding. I believe this book qualifies in all those aspects.

However, I do have one unpleasant comment. I hate it when authors keep coming out with new editions with just small delta changes - forcing students to buy high priced editions because some professors could care less about the cost of books to students (after all, we profs get them for free). The 7th edition is not a whole lot different than the 6th edition (about 2 or 3 new chapters included in the 7th edition). Considering that you can buy a used 6th edition for half the price of a new 7th edition, I recommended my students to go with the 6th edition instead and chose to just teach them some of the additional materials from the 7th edition.

What I would have liked to see in this book - greater detail (perhaps with some psuedocode) on the workings of the kernel and how programs can take advantage of it (I guess I am thinking along the lines of Steven's UNIX programming book).

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New and Updated Seventh Edition, March 3, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition (Hardcover)

This new seventh edition of the book has been brought up to date to include recent developments in operating systems such as Windows XP and the new small footprint operating systems that work in hand held devices such as the Palm and in cell phones. In addition the text now corresponds to the suggestions from Computing Curricula 2001 for teaching operating systems.

Most of the book is on general purpose operating systems such as Linux and those from Microsoft. But at the end of the book there are chapters on other types of operating such as Real Time Operating Systems and MultiMedia OS's.

Finally there are some chapters which the authors call case studies. In these, one chapter goes into a detailed discussion of Linux, another chapter covers Windows XP. Chapter 23 covers several early operating systems that helped to define the features that make up modern os's. These include: Atlas, XDX-940, THE, RC 4000, CTSS, MULTICS, OS/360, and MACH, along with brief mentions of several others.

Note that this not a book on how to use operating systems, this is a book on how operating systems are designed. It is intended for upper level undergraduate students or first year graduate students.

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Book on the Concepts Underlying Operating Systems, July 8, 2005

By 

David A. Lessnau (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition (Hardcover)

From the 2nd paragraph of the preface, the authors:

"...wrote this book as a text for an introductory course in operating systems at the junior or senior undergraduate level or at the first-year graduate level.... It provides a clear description of the concepts that underlie operating systems. As prerequisites, we assume that the reader is familiar with basic data structures, computer organization, and a high-level language, such as C."

I'd say that's an excellent synopsis of this book. It's not a book on how to use or how to program operating systems. It's a book on the CONCEPTS underlying them. It's not as difficult to get through, but it's somewhat like Patterson's & Hennessy's "Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface" <ASIN:1558606041>. Where that book looks at how computers work from the point of view of electrons whizzing by on the silicon, this book looks at how they work from the point of view of the operating system. Personally, I'd put the target educational level at no lower than the senior undergraduate level just because it'd probably be very difficult for a junior to have the necessary prerequisites. But, regardless, it's a well-written book that covers the topic decently. I rate it at 4 stars out of 5.

As an aside, Florida State University (FSU) uses this book in their COP 4610 course: "Operating Systems & Concurrent Programming."