Code from Lions' commentary on UNIX, displayed in a text editor. At the center of the screen is the line "You are not expected to understand this.". In front of the text, the title of this course "CS240: Advanced Topics in Operating Systems".

CS 240: Advanced Topics in Operating Systems

Autumn 2025—Mendel Rosenblum

Class Abstract

CS 240 is a graduate level course in operating systems, covering classic and new papers in virtual memory management, synchronization and communication, file systems, protection and security, extensions and fault tolerance, systems for machine learning, and the history and experience of systems programming.

Most of the work in this course consists of reading journal and conference papers. We will usually cover one paper for each class meeting. This class is primarily discussion based, and attendance and active participation are required. We expect you to read the papers carefully before the relevant class session; class time will not be used to rehash the material in the papers. Instead, it will be used to highlight the important points and discuss some of the more interesting features. There will be as much as 10-15 hours of reading per week.

This course will have reading questions (approximately one per class meeting) and one or two medium-sized programming assignments. All submitted work for this course must by directly written by the submitting student(s). Using generative AI tools to complete the reading question or programming projects (e.g. generating text) is prohibited. We'll also have a midterm and final exam. See the Exams section below.

Grades will be weighted as follows:

The course is roughly organized as follows:

We assume you have taken an undergraduate OS class such as CS 112 or CS140E, and have a working understanding of OS concepts.

Course Information

Schedule

The exact schedule for this year is still being decided, but will approximately resemble previous years.

Week Tuesday Thursday
1

9/23

9/25
2

9/30

10/2
3

10/7

10/9
4

10/14

10/16
5

10/21

Midterm Exam

10/23
6

10/28

10/30
7

11/4

No Class—Democracy Day

11/6
8

11/11

11/13
9

11/18

11/20
∅

11/25

No Class - Thanksgiving

11/27

No Class - Thanksgiving
10

12/02

12/04
11

12/09

Final Exam

3:30-6:30PM

Location: Gates B3

Exams

There will be two exams: a midterm and final exam. The exams will be open book (class materials including papers) but no electronic devices. The final is cumulative.

Sample exams with solutions are available on sites from previous years.

Midterm Exam

Final Exam

CGOE Information

The attendance requirement is waived for Center for Global and Online Education (CGOE) (previously known as Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD)) students; other course requirements remain the same.
CGOE students are encouraged to participate asynchronously via Ed. Exams may be taken in-person with non-CGOE students; if they are taken remotely instead, exam monitors must be nominated in accordance with CGOE policies, and the exams must be coordinated with the CGOE exams team. CGOE students may attend office hours virtually; however, please try to let us know in advance so we can do the necessary setup.

Access and Accommodations

Stanford is committed to providing equal educational opportunities for disabled students. Disabled students are a valued and essential part of the Stanford community. We welcome you to our class.

If you experience disability, please register with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate your needs, support appropriate and reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Academic Accommodation Letter for faculty. To get started, or to re-initiate services, please visit oae.stanford.edu.

If you already have an Academic Accommodation Letter, we invite you to share your letter with us. Academic Accommodation Letters should be shared using an email to cs240-aut2526-staff@lists.stanford.edu at the earliest possible opportunity so we may partner with you and OAE to identify any barriers to access and inclusion that might be encountered in your experience of this course.

Disclosure

Video cameras located in the back of the room will capture the instructor presentations in this course. For your convenience, you can access these recordings by logging into the course Canvas site. These recordings might be reused in other Stanford courses, viewed by other Stanford students, faculty, or staff, or used for other education and research purposes. Note that while the cameras are positioned with the intention of recording only the instructor, occasionally a part of your image or voice might be incidentally captured. If you have questions, please contact a member of the teaching team.