Software Tools for Low-Level Software and Operating Systems Classes

Low-level software is a particularly challenging topic to learn. In this paper, we present a framework and an application that makes the task of understanding system level software and hardware simpler. Traditional analysis tools, such as profilers and debuggers, are either too difficult to use in these situations, or are simply not available. Hardware interactions, which are typical of low level software, make the challenge of understanding even more complicated. The tools we have built provide a view into the workings of such systems in both a simulation environment and on real hardware. The motivation for our framework, and the visualization tools that use it, is the teaching of an undergraduate level operating systems course. We discovered while teaching this course that many students struggled with the low-level environment and concepts of the course. We decided then to develop a set of applications and utilities to help students understand the inner working of the systems they were dealing with.

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