CSEP551 -- Programming Assignment #1

Out: Thursday October 1st, 2009
Due: Thursday October 8th, before class

For this assignment, you will write and run a few microbenchmarks on the operating system of your choice. Here's what you should measure; precisely how you design and implement your measurement code is up to you.

  1. System call overhead. (Note: your answer will be in the microsecond time scale.)

  2. The latency to perform a disk seek. (Note: your answer will be in the millisecond time scale.)

  3. The sequential read bandwidth of one disk. (Note: your answer will be in the tens of megabytes per second range.)

  4. BONUS: Context switch overhead.
A few things to keep in mind:

What to turn in

Please email Steve and Colin the following: