Advanced computer systems
Graduate · CS / Programming
Syllabus focus
Standard syllabus · STEM / applied
Pricing
Graduate-level rates are set on consultation. See the pricing page for K–12 and undergraduate rates.
Topics typically covered
Standard syllabus
Kernel and hardware
- Modern OS kernel architectures (monolithic vs microkernel survey)
- Device drivers and interrupt handling
- Virtual memory advanced topics: huge pages, NUMA
- Storage stack: SSDs, journaling, copy-on-write file systems
- Scheduling for multicore and datacenter workloads
Virtualization
- Hypervisors: Type 1 vs Type 2
- Hardware virtualization extensions
- Containers vs VMs tradeoffs
- Live migration and checkpoint/restart
- Resource isolation: cgroups, namespaces deep dive
STEM / applied
Datacenter systems
- RDMA and high-performance networking (intro)
- Distributed storage systems (GFS/HDFS ideas)
- Consensus in production systems
- Energy-efficient computing in datacenters
- eBPF and programmable kernel observability
Research orientation
- Reading OSDI/SOSP papers
- Reproducing systems research artifacts
- Benchmarking methodology and pitfalls
- Security research: Spectre/Meltdown case study
- Project: extend a teaching OS or research prototype
Notes
Expect strong undergrad OS and systems programming background.