Operating System Concepts (Hardcover)

by Abraham Silberschatz (Author), Peter Baer Galvin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
This best-selling book, now in its fifth edition, provides a solid theoretical foundation for understanding operating systems. Authors Abraham Silberschatz and Peter Galvin discuss key concepts that are applicable to a variety of systems. They also present a large number of examples taken from common operating systems, including Windows and Solaris 2. This book thus teaches general notions in operating systems while giving the teacher and students the flexibility to choose the implementation system. New in this Edition: A section on I/O Systems comprises three chapters on I/O Systems, Secondary-Storage Structure, and Tertiary-Storage Structure. Two case studies illustrate Windows NT and Linux. Chapters on Memory Management, Virtual Memory, Network Structures, and Security have been updated significantly. Online version of the case-study chapter on Mach and of the appendix on the Nachos operating-system project are in place.

This edition of Operating-System Concepts retains the high-quality presentation of previous editions. This book is perfectly suited both for students and for practitioners (such as systems programmers) who want to learn about operating systems. The modern examples serve to reinforce the concepts.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 888 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 5 edition (January 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201591138
• ISBN-13: 978-0201591132
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,854,963 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Attempt at Presenting Difficult Subject, February 22, 2003

By	Robert Heyward (Dayton, OH United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Operating System Concepts, 6th Edition (Hardcover)

This popular book was written as an introductory course to operating systems but systematically provides an extensive description of operating system concepts. The 1st half of the book is typically used for undergraduate computer science classes although the book as a whole is often required for graduate level classes.

It is assumed that readers will have some knowledge of high-level languages and general computer organization. The book does not spotlight any one particular operating system but rather presents concepts and algorithms that are common to many of the Oss that are commonly used today, including MS-DOS, Windows 2000 & NT, Linux, Sun Microsystems' Solaris 2, IBM OS/2, Apple Macintosh, and DEC VMS.

The book has 7 major parts:
1) Overview: What Operating Systems are, what they do, how they are designed, and where they came from. General history and explanations. Some discussion on hardware.

2) Process Management: How information is processed. Methods for process scheduling, interprocess communication, process synchronization, deadlock handling, and threads.

3) Storage Management: How main memory functions and executes. The mechanisms for storage of and access to data is covered. The classic internal algorithms and structures of storage management is discussed and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

4) I/0 Systems: The types of devices that attach to a computer. How the devices are accessed and controlled. Performance issues and examined thoroughly.

5) Distributed systems: The collection of processors that do not share a clock or memory. How distributed file systems are shared, synchronized, communicate, and deal with deadlocks.

6) Protection and Security: How mechanisms ensure that only certain processes that have obtained proper authorization can use certain files, memory segments, CPU, etc.

7) Case Studies: This is where individual real operating systems are discussed in depth. These systems are Linux, Windows 2000, FreeBSD, Mach, and Nachos.

Of course this is a very general list and omits many other aspects of Operating Systems that are included in the book. This 887 page book does not include formal proofs but it does contain (though it would be better to have more) figures, diagrams, examples, and notes to help explain concepts.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK, but too general, October 19, 2000

By	chaka a allen (Pasadena, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Operating System Concepts, 5th Edition (Hardcover)

I've taken 2 operating systems courses at 2 different universities that used different editions of this book. In both classes, the biggest benefit came from the teachers and not the text. It encapsulates concepts from every major operating system in use today, but it's too general to do anything with. You can't use this book to help you write code because everything is at such a high level. It is good as a reference point to understand operating systems concepts...hence the title :) The process and memory coverage is great, although the process synchronization chapter didn't help my understanding much. If you're interested in learning the ideas behind the nuts and bolts of operating systems (what is a process? what is a thread? what is virtual memory? how do these things work in a general sense and on different systems?), read this book. If you want to implement those nuts and bolts (how would I implement this in my OS environment?), this book by itself won't help you much.

I gave the book 3 stars because the book can confuse you if you let it. My first profesor presented the material in a very confusing way. My next profesor did a better job but it still wasnt great. If you take it for what it is, a coverage of general concepts only, it makes the reading a lot easier. That's my conclusion :)

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Much better than Tanenbaum's book, February 13, 1999

By A Customer

I used this book to teach an OS course to computer engineers at a 4-yr university. The course worked out well and the students liked the book. I made the mistake of using Tanenbaum's book as a reference, and got burned _twice_ by blatent errors in his book. The only problem with this book is that it covers some really esoteric subjects (i.e. theoretical deadlock detection algorithms) that never get any practical use.

In summary,
* Tanenbaum: wanders a lot, many errors
* Stallings: too dry for most people
* Silberschatz: the best of the bunch !!