Operating Systems – Internals and Design Principles, 8th Edition

Book Preface

WHAT’S NEW IN THE EIGHTH EDITION

Since the seventh edition of this book was published, the field has seen continued  innovations and improvements. In this new edition, I try to capture these changes while maintaining a broad and comprehensive coverage of the entire field. To begin the process of revision, the seventh edition of this book was extensively reviewed by a number of professors who teach the subject and by professionals working in the field. The result is that, in many places, the narrative has been clarified and tightened, and illustrations have been improved. Beyond these refinements to improve pedagogy and user friendliness, the technical content of the book has been updated throughout, to reflect the ongoing changes in this exciting field, and the instructor and student support has been expanded. The most noteworthy changes are as follows:

-  Windows 8: Windows 8 is Microsoft’s latest OS offering for PCs, workstations, and servers, which includes a number of changes to the internal architecture. The new edition provides details on Windows 8 internals in all of the key technology areas covered in this book, including process/thread management, scheduling, memory management, security, file systems, and I/O.
-  Android operating system: Android is the fastest growing mobile platform. The real-world constraints and operating environment of mobile devices are quite different from traditional desktop or server computers. It is important for students to learn this new environment.
-  Embedded Linux: The use of a minimal version of Linux for embedded systems has grown in popularity. This new edition provides an overview of the key elements of the embedded Linux approach.
-  Virtual machines: Server virtualization and other forms of virtual machines are becoming increasingly widespread. A new chapter deals with the operating system design issues for virtual machines.
-  Multicore design issues: The dominant computer architecture is now multicore. This raises new OS design issues that are addressed in this new edition.
-  I/O standards: The book has been updated to reflect the latest developments, including Thunderbolt.
-  Storage hardware: The discussion of storage hardware has been updated and now includes discussion of solid-state drives.
-  Fault tolerance: The ACM/IEEE Computer Science Curricula 2013 lists fault tolerance as one of the core topics for an OS course. A new section provides an overview of fault tolerance.