Spring 2006



FAQ

6.033 Class Notes Errata

If you notice errors of any kind in the 6.033 class notes, ranging from minor typos to major blunders, please report them by e-mail to Saltzer@mit.edu and kaashoek@mit.edu.

 
   
April 14, 2006 Pages 9-49 to 9-56 (in Section C). The terminology of "winners" and "losers" on these pages was modified from last year, but the modification didn't get completely propagated through the text. For details, see the corrected version, which has change bars in the margins.
   
March 16, 2006 Page 7-58. The sentence right below the signature of network_send() is missing words. It should be: "...select a network protocol with which to send this_segment, and..."
   
March 3, 2006 Figure 5-23: The implementation of yield is incorrect. It only works for one processor. With more than one processor, two processors may end up running the same thread, which is wrong! To see how this could happen, consider 2 processors and 3 threads, and the following sequence of events. Threads 0 and 1 run on processor A and B, respectively.  Next to run will be thread 2. When thread 1 yields, processor B will run thread 2.  When thread 2 yields, processor B will run thread 0.  Now processors A and B are running thread 0. The correct solution is to add a state variable for each thread recording whether it is running or runnable, and to skip running threads. Figure 5-24 is better, but also wrong (see next errata).
   
March 3, 2006 Figure 5-24: There are two lines "ID <- (ID + 1) mod 7". The second one should be deleted. Both figure 5-23 and 5-24 should state the assumption that their correctness relies on the fact that there are more threads than processors; otherwise, one of the extra processors will search endlessly, keeping the threadtable locked, thus preventing any other thread from yielding. Finally, when entering yield, the processor should set the state of the thread it was running to RUNNABLE (in the else clause), and the state of the newly selected thread to RUNNING.
   

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