An Updated Emulated Architecture to Support the Study of Operating Systems

One of the most effective ways to learn something new is by actively practising it, and there is—maybe—no better way to study an Operating Systems course than by building your own OS. However, it is important to emphasize how the realization of an operating system capable of running on a real hardware machine could be an overly complex and unsuitable task for an undergraduate student. Nonetheless, it is possible to use a simplified computer system simulator to achieve the goal of teaching Computer Science foundations in the University environment, thus allowing students to experience a quite realistic representation of an operating system. µMPS has been created for this purpose, a pedagogically appropriate machine emulator, based around the MIPS R2/3000 microprocessor, which features an accessible architecture that includes a rich set of easily programmable devices. µMPS has an almost two decades old historical development and the outcome of this following thesis is the third version of the software, dubbed µMPS3. This second major revision aims to simplify, even more, the complexity of the emulator in order to lighten the load of work required by the students during the OS design and implementation. Two of these simplifications are the removal of the virtual memory bit, which allowed address translation to be turned on and off, and the replacement of the tape device, used as storage devices, with a new flash drive device—certainly something more familiar to the new generation of students. Thanks to the employment of this software and the feedback received over the last decade, it has been possible to realize not just this following thesis, but also to develop some major improvements, which concern everything from the project building tools to the front-end, making µMPS a modern and reliable educational software.