CS530: Graduate Operating Systems (2026 Spring)

• Course goal Welcome to graduate operating systems. This course will cover a broad range of systems including operating system designs, memory and file systems, virtual machines and cloud systems, and system security. This course will discuss influential, fundamental system papers to extract lessons both on how to design systems and how to evaluate them.

• Course requirements and goals

  1. Reading: Students will learn how to read and critique research papers in systems area. Students are asked to read one or two papers every class and write down questions during the class

  2. Presenting: A group of students will be asked to give a 25min-long presentation for each class

  3. Writing: A group of students will be asked to write a full paper during the semester and review other papers

• Target Audience 

This course is designed for senior undergraduate students and all graduate students. 

• Grading

  • Paper presentation: 40%

  • Paper critique: 10%

  • Class participation (quiz in class): 10%

  • Five labs: 40%

• Discussion board:  piazza.com/kaist.ac.kr/spring2026/cs530 

• Advice

  • How to read research papers:

    • https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPaper.pdf 

    • http://john.regehr.org/reading_list/efficientReading.pdf