This course is focused on principles underlying design and analysis of computational elements that interact with the physical environment. Increasingly, such embedded computers are everywhere, from smart cameras to medical devices to automobiles. While the classical theory of computation focuses on the function that a program computes, to understand embedded computation, we need to focus on the  reactive nature of the interaction of a component with its environment via inputs and outputs, the continuous dynamics of the physical world, different ways of communication among components, and requirements concerning safety, timeliness, stability, and performance. Developing tools for design, analysis, and implementation of embedded systems in a principled manner is an active research area. This course will attempt to give students a coherent introduction to this emerging area.

This course assumes mathematical maturity, commensurate with either ESE 210 (Introduction to Dynamical Systems), or CIS 262 (Introduction to Theory of Computation). It is suitable for students who have undergraduate degree in computer science, or computer engineering, or electrical engineering. It is also suitable for Penn undergraduates in CIS or CE as an upper-level elective.

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The course is a masters-level course on computer networks. Topics to be covered include: Internet architecture, network applications, addressing, routing, transport protocols, network security, wireless networks, and peer-to-peer networks. You will also be exposed to latest topics such as understanding how Skype, Kazaa, BitTorrent, and Tor Anonymizer works, and new open-source research tools such as the network simulator 3. One of the biggest selling points of the class is that students get to work in teams developing network protocols in a 24-node cluster. The projects will be developed in layers, starting from traditional routing protocols, cumulating into a final project on building the Chord distributed hash table. Last semester, several students additionally built a variety of p2p applications over their Chord implementation as extra credits. 

Click here for more course information.

Click here for course information.