CS85: Distributed Systems
Spring 2006

TR 2:40-3:55, 246 Sci. Center
Swarthmore College

Professor: Tia Newhall Email: Office: 249 Sci. Center Phone: 690-5637 Office hours: W: 2:30-3:30, R: 4-5

Contents

• Class Participation (40%)

  There are three components of your class participation grade:
  1. Participation in class discussion of research papers
     You are expected to come to class ready to discuss the reading assignment for the day. See my Tips for Reading Research Papers document to get some idea of how to read these types of papers.

  2. Reaction Notes
     Each class meeting, we will discuss one or two research papers. Before we meet, you will post your reaction notes to the paper(s) we will discuss in class. Your reactions to each reading will be due by 8:00am on the morning of class. You will be posting your reactions to the online courseware package Edventure. Your username on this system will be the same as the username on your CS account, and you can send email to password@edventure.brynmawr.edu to get a password for your Edventure account. Once you post your reaction, you will be able to read other students' reactions for that week. You should read them before class time and be ready to respond to at least one question or comment raised by someone else.

     Your reactions should not be summaries of the papers, instead they should be the product the reading process (e.g., questions that were raised, points that were not clear, connections to previous material you've read, an evaluation of the work presented, etc).

     Reaction notes should reflect a critical reading of the paper. Some questions to think about as you read (your reaction notes do not need to answer every one of these): Did the authors do what they said they were going to do? What are the important ideas (just because an author says something is important doesn't mean it necessarily is)? Do their results make sense? Are their methods sound? Are there weaknesses in their solution? What assumptions are they making? How does their work fit in with other similar work? What improvements and/or extensions to the area do they contribute? Are there terms, ideas, techniques, that you don't understand?

  3. Presentation of Research Paper(s) on sub-topic
     Each of you will give an in-class presentation on a sub-topic that we will cover. In addition to reading the weekly research papers, you should read additional related papers. Based on your reading you will prepare a 45-60 min. presentation using html, pdf, powerpoint slides. By the Friday prior to your presentation, you should meet with me with an outline of your talk, and you should meet with me again at least by Monday (Wednesday) prior to your Tuesday (Thursday) talk to go over your slides. See my Oral Presentation Guide for information on how to structure a research presentation.

     Beginning with the week 3 topic RPC, you can pick any topic on which you will give a presentation.

• Programming and Written Assignments (10%)

  During the first half of the semester, you will be assigned a few small programming assignments to give you some practice writing parallel programs. In addition, one or more short written assignments may be assigned.

• Course Project (50%)

  You will work on a semester long course project related to distributed or cluster computing. Components of your grade include an written project proposal, a written and oral midterm progress report, and a final written report, oral presentation, and demo of your project.
  Project Components and Details

A reading list of technical papers (to be assigned weekly to the class schedule below)

WEEK	TOPIC	READING	ASSIGNMENT
1 (1/16)	Introduction to Distributed Systems, Clusters	Thurs	HW 0
2 (1/23)	Distributed Communication	Tues Thurs	HW 1
3 (1/30)	Message Passing and RPC	Tues Thurs	-
4 (2/6)	Time, event ordering, Agreement	Tues Thurs	HW 2
5 (2/13)	Distributed State, Naming Paper Presentation (Tues): George Paper Presentation (Thurs): Dan	Tues Thurs	-
6 (2/20)	Distributed Shared Memory, Load Balancing Paper Presentation (Tues): Mustafa	Tues Thurs	-
7 (2/27)	Scheduling	Tues	Project Proposal Due Tuesday in class
-	SPRING BREAK	-	-
8 (3/13)	Fault Tolerance Paper Presentation (Tues): Alan Paper Presentation (Thurs): Ken	Tues Thurs	-
9 (3/20)	Authentication and Security	Tues Thurs	Thursday: project progress report 1
10 (3/27)	Clusters, Metacomputing Paper Presentation (Tues): Michael	Tues Thurs	-
11 (4/3)	Peer-to-Peer Systems, Distributed File Systems Paper Presentation (Tues): Javier	Tues Thurs	-
12 (4/10)	Distributed File Systems	Tues	Thursday: project progress report 2
13 (4/17)	Misc Paper Presentation (Tues): Alex	Tues Thurs	-
14 (4/24)	Project Presentations	-	Course Project Presentations in class
Finals	Final Projects	-	Final Project Report (and demo) due before noon, May 12

• Additional Cluster and Distributed Computing Papers This is not intended as a complete list, but as a starting point to papers on several topics. This will be updated throughout the semester.
• Some Cluster Computing Links
• IEEE Distributed Systems Online
• The Top 500 Supercomputers
• ParaScope IEEE Listing of Parallel Computing Sites
• HPC Wire

Reading, Writing, Presentation Advice

• Tips for Reading Research Papers
• Research and Writing Guide This is written as a CS honors thesis guide, but is applicable to the type of research and writing that you will do for your course project. Look at the "Getting Started" part for links to starting points for finding related work to your project.
• CS Project Etiquette Tools and Guidelines for using shared CS resources to run long-running, intensive applications.
• Oral Presentation Guide Guidelines for preparing a research talk, and links to other oral presentation advice.

Parallel Programming Links

• MPI: A Message-Passing Interface Standard
• LAM/MPI Tutorial
• PVM
• Introduction to PVM Programming
• POSIX Threads

Unix Help

• CS Deptpartment's Unix Help Pages
• My Unix Documentation make, tar, cvs, rcs, debugging tools, editors, email, protecting and sharing files, C style guide, ...