CMPT 351 Operating Systems
Spring 2016
Working with a partner, answer the following questions as best you can. I am not expecting
you to be able to correctly answer each question, rather I intend to use it as a (a) gauge to see
how much basic material you know about operating systems and, (b) to begin a discussion
on this topic.
1. How many operating systems can you name? In what types of devices might you find
an operating system?
2. What are some of the computer resources an operating system must manage?
3. What is meant by the term operating system kernel?
4. What is a system call?
5. What is a process? What is a thread?
6. Assume an operating system has three programs running in memory and all are performing different tasks. This system has only one CPU and only one program may use
the CPU at a given point in time. Describe how the operating system may allocate the
CPU to each program.
7. Using the previous question, now consider if we add multiple processing cores to the
system. What benefits may this provide? Does it change how the operating system
will allocate processing cores to the three programs in memory? Explain.
8. What are the advantages of running an operating system in a virtual machine than
running it natively?
9. Consider if you are running a memory intensive application such as Photoshop or Final
Cut Pro. Does the entire application needs to fit into available memory, or can just a
portion of the application reside in memory?
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