Supported by


Lectures & Workshops

We're running a series of lectures and workshops teaching fundamental OS development.

Find out more


Is this supported by the University of Bristol?

Yes!
Our lectures and workshops are supported by both the Electronic & Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments.

Our lectures and workshops will act as a great reinforcement of your knowledge for your course and give the chance to get hands-on with everything you've learnt.

What do I need to know?


Is this only for students at the University of Bristol?

At the moment, yes. But if you're interested in running something similar at your University or organisation, please get in touch!

Contact Us

Tuesday afternoons

Tuesday afternoons
16:00 till 18:00
Merchant Venturers Building, 2.09

Course Outline

short Lecture

A short (20-30min) lecture given by Edward Nutting, that will explain a new, core concept for that week and demonstrate how to implement it. This will give you the information you need for the workshop which follows.

Get the notes

followed by a Workshop

Relaxed, open workshop allowing hands-on experience implementing what you've just been taught. Helpers will be around to answer questions. x86-based laptops and brand new MIPS-based Creator CI20s will be available for use.

What's a Creator CI20?

What will we be covering?

The series will take you from no understanding of computer architecture to having a basic, working x86 or MIPS operating system. Along the way, we'll be teaching fundamental computer and OS architecture but with a practical focus to all information provided.

The series will include:

  1. x86 and MIPS processor architecture
  2. Bootloaders and initialisation
  3. Assembly Language (x86, MIPS)
  4. Compiling & Linking C
  5. Compiling & Linking C#
  6. Memory (inc. virtual memory)
  7. Interrupts (inc. timer and task switching)
  8. Video-output (x86 only)
  9. Keyboard

Is this supported by the University?

Yes! Our lectures and workshops are supported by both the Electronic & Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments.

Our lectures and workshops will act as a great reinforcement of your knowledge for your course and give the chance to get hands-on with everything you've learnt.

What do I need to know?

You'll need to at least one C-based programming language to at least a reasonable level. If you've done first year CS, CSE or EE, you should be fine!

Please be aware though, that we won't be teaching basic programming, algorithms, software engineering or similar in the lectures or workshops. We'll assume you can read a short section of code and be able to figure out what it's doing.