Question

Since this description of the system is fairly vague, you will have to make certain assumptions to answer
the questions. Read the questions below and before you start you answer clearly list/state all assumptions
that you will be making to answer the question.

Consider that you are designing the OS for a mysterious client. The full functionality of the OS is never
elaborated to you; however, you are provided the following bits and pieces of information are available
to you.
1. Number of processes in execution is fixed, i.e. there are always X number of processes in execution.
2. These X processes request the same number of resources Y every time.
3. When and how a process would request a resource is never known.
4. User is allowed to execute new task (via a custom shell) in which case an older task has to be stopped.
Given your design decisions, the requirement of the system; list and elaborate on all possible
mechanism which can be used to detect race conditions during runtime in this system.

A solution that can detect more scenarios than others will be considered better, keeping view that the
underlying assumptions and design are reasonable and implementable.
Simply stating race conditions cannot be detected at runtime will be awarded with zero marks. Marks
will be deducted for writing unnecessary and irrelevant details like the definition of race conditions etc.

Hint: Given the open-ended and tricky nature of this question, it would be advisable to balance your
time, rather than going for a perfect answer that handles all possible scenarios (which is probably
impossible), save time and go for a practically do able answer that will work in most scenarios.

Answer 1

Designing an operating system needs these steps :

1. First of all we will have to decide what our operating system has to do.Since the details provided here are not so clear , therefore  we can make it Graphical User Interace as that will be easy to deal with.

2.Choose the processor platform . As the details are not clear so X86 processing platform will be better here.

3. Choose a development environment either windows or linux that will be used to code the operating system.

4. Deciding a boot loader. Boot loader here can be a preexisting one e.g GRUB(Grand Unified Bootloader ) or it can be a newly created .

5. Deciding the programming language .It is the very first step in the designing of OS as a developer should be comfortable in writing the code without  any difficulty.

6. Choosing a kernel Design .Kernel acts as a bridge between application & hardware. Kernels are usually of two kinds - micro kernels & monolithic kernels .Micro Kernels will be here better to implement as in this keernel user and kernel services will be implemented in different address spaces.

7. Begin with small things . This means that first of all we should try to display text , interrupts rather than to tasks like multitasking ,memory management etc.

8.Use a Virtual Machine like VM Ware or Oracle Virtual Box for testing the newly made operating system.

9. Release an initial version . This release can be done in a public repository so that feedback will help us to improve

System Requirements :

CPU : Intel or AMD processor with 64 bit support.

GPU : nVidia GeForce GTX 1050 or equivalent.

8 GB of free disk space.

1920*1080 Screen Resolution.

Possible mechanisms which can be used to detect race conditions at run time :

1.GPU accelerated Data Race Detection.

2.Instruction Grain Program Monitoring.

3. Data race detection algorithm.

4. Using Race Track tool.