CSUMB Learning Journal (Chris - Group 1)

  Write a 1 - 2 paragraph description of what you learned this third week in CST 334 Topic: Introduction to Memory Virtualization: This week covered the topic of memory virtualization -- basically how memory for any process is handled. A large topic to this that can be easily seen in our daily tech usage is fragmentation. In fact, on an OS such as Windows 11, every file or folder has two different size attributes, the actual size and the physical size on disk. This is showing fragmentation / segmentation for files on this OS. In order to keep programs separate from each other, an OS chooses to give each process their own virtual memory that is a segment of the actual physical memory on the system. This is great for keeping programs unaware of their surroundings but it can cause the issue of unused space just being wasted. Algorithms such as "best-fit" and "worst-fit" try to mitigate this problem but nothing is ever 100% efficient. During program execution, the virtu...

  Write a 1 - 2 paragraph description of what you learned this second week in CST 334 Topic: Processes -- This weeks reading and lectures focused on what processes are and how they are handled by the OS. Programs are comprised of multiple components such as memory allocated to it by the OS and the actually instructions / programming for that process. The program API includes calls such as fork, wait, and exec. These allow programs to create new processes, aid in scheduling, and alter a program during execution respectively.  -- Past this, the OS got a lot of coverage this week with how it manages a task queue and program execution with the CPU. First off, the CPU is handled virtually: meaning that the OS dynamically hands, pauses, or exchanged tasks that the CPU is handling in order to use the CPU in the most efficient way possible. Due to the CPU being busy with other tasks when running, the OS needs to gain control eventually so that it can actually make any decisions. This ...

  Write a 1 - 2 paragraph description of what you learned this first week in CST 334 This week was a introduction into operating systems with a heavy focus on what their purpose is and how they accomplish that task. Overall, the purpose of an operating system is to provide a layer of abstraction from the hardware level so that users don't have to have a large pool of high level knowledge in order to complete simple tasks. An operating system does this by handling multiple aspects of the system such as file permissions, instruction order, and hardware management.  An operating system handles hardware management through multiple sets of APIs, it handles the instruction order so that system hardware is utilized efficiently, and it handles file permissions in order to uphold a layer of privacy and security in the system files.