The first half of this book covers the fundamental concepts in operating system design. Chapter 1 gives a history of operating systems and presents the views that command-line users and system-call users have of the system. This distinction is used throughout the book. Chapter 2 talks about process management and scheduling. As part of this discussion, various scheduling algorithms and their performance implications are addressed. Two chapters on synchronization of interprocess communications follow. As part of this discussion, deadlock detection and avoidance algorithms are surveyed.

The next two chapters address memory management and virtual memory. Concepts of address translation, page replacement policies, and so on are discussed. From memory, the book moves on to secondary storage. Chapter 7 covers disks and file systems, including file management issues such as directory structure, disk space allocation, and caching. A chapter on computer security and policy follows. The first part of the book concludes with chapter 8, which describes authentication, access controls, cryptography, and formal security models.

The second part of the book is on various implementation aspects. The author starts with a brief discussion of the input/output subsystem, in which he discusses hardware interfaces and programmed and interrupt-driven I/O. Next, chapters 10 and 11 are a detailed discussion on how to implement an operating system kernel (KMOS). The code for KMOS is also on a diskette that is supplied with the book.

Part 3 covers several advanced topics, including issues associated with multiprocessor operating systems and distributed operating systems. Topics such as remote procedure calls, distributed virtual memory, and distributed file systems are touched upon. The book then concludes with case studies on MS-DOS, UNIX, iRMX86, and an imbedded real-time system.

Overall, the content of the book is good. The topics are relevant, and the author manages to cover some fairly sophisticated issues while maintaining broad coverage. Few textbooks, for example, cover distributed virtual memory systems. The inclusion of a chapter on operating system security is also unusual. Another strength of the book is that the author goes beyond the immediate implementation of a particular operating system to discuss general issues. This is important, as it helps the reader get an appreciation of the design alternatives. Although the author uses existing systems such as UNIX for examples, the material is more generally applicable.

The book falls short on presentation. The language and the writing are somewhat formal. In addition, the sample code is not well integrated into the text. For example, in several places where algorithms are discussed, it would have helped to see code or pseudocode that implements them. The KMOS examples are in an appendix, separate from the text that describes them. It would have been better to integrate them so that the reader would have some context and commentary to go with the code.