Course Description

This is a graduate-level research course on `computer systems` (broad sense), covering topics in distributed systems, operating systems, overlay networks, and system and network security. We will go through research papers in ACM SOSP 2003 (19th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles) with additional papers drawing from USENIX/ACM OSDI 2004 (Operating Systems Design and Implementation). Students are expected to read, present, discuss, and critique these recent research papers. This course forms a reading group for collaborative learning. The goal is to (1) for beginning graduate (or senior undergraduate) students interested in `systems` to obtain knowledge in recent related work, and (2) for senior graduate students to keep updated on their related work knowledge.

The working language in this course is English.

Course Prerequisite

Students should have taken undergraduate courses in operating systems and computer networks. Students should take a look at a few papers in SOSP & OSDI to see if they can understand these papers. Students must be able to attend all classes.

Grading Policies

Grades will be based on the quality of your presentations (30%), quality of your paper reviews (40%), and your level of participations in class discussion (30%). There will be no exams in this course. If a student misses a class, he/she will automatically lose 4% of the grades. If a student is more than 20 minutes late for the class, he/she will automatically lose 2% of the grades. No exceptions!