CIS 5050: Software Systems (Spring 2024)
Overview

Image of a router
This course provides an introduction to fundamental concepts of distributed systems, and the design principles for building large-scale computational systems.

We will study some of the key building blocks – such as synchronization primitives, group communication protocols, and replication techniques – that form the foundation of modern distributed systems, such as cloud-computing platforms or the Internet. We will also look at some real-world examples of distributed systems, such as GFS, MapReduce, Spark, and Dynamo, and we will gain some hands-on experience with building and running distributed systems.

CIS 5050 is one of the core courses in the MSE program, as well as an option for the WPE-I requirement for PhD students.

Logistics

Instructor:
Linh Thi Xuan Phan
Office hours: Thursdays 12-1pm (Levine 576)

When and where:
Tuesdays/Thursdays 10:15-11:45am, LRSM Auditorium

Teaching assistants and office hours:

Naveen Albert OH: Mondays/Thursdays 8:15-9:45am (Online)
Raunaq Singh OH: Mondays/Wednesdays 1:15-3:15pm
Gene Liu OH: Mondays 4:00-5:00pm
Benjamin Le OH: Mondays 5:00-6:00pm (Levine 501 bump space)
Andy Jiang OH: Tuesdays 12:30-1:30pm (Online)
Jay Vishwarupe OH: Tuesdays 2:00-3:00pm (Levine 501 bump space)
Larry Huang OH: Tuesdays 2:30-3:30pm (Levine 612)
Shyam Mehta OH: Tuesdays 4:00-5:00pm (Online)
Xinran Liu OH: Wednesdays 10:00-11:00am (Levine 601 bump space)
David Feng OH: Wednesdays 12:00-1:15pm (Levine 5th floor bump space)
Shuyue Wang OH: Wednesdays 2:00-3:00pm + Fridays 9:00-10am
Yuanqi Wang OH: Wednesdays 3:30-5:30pm (Online)
Andrew Wang OH: Thursdays 4:00-5:30pm
Crescent Xiong OH: Thursdays 5:30-7:00pm (Online)
Yujuan Song OH: Fridays 10:00-11:30am (Levine 3rd floor bump space)
Joseph Zhang OH: Saturdays 9:00-10am (Levine 3rd floor bump space)

Note: We will conduct office hours online via OHQ until a location is assigned.

Course policies

Course textbook:
Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms, 4th edition (by M. van Steen and A. Tanenbaum). You can get a digital version of this book for free; hardcopies will be available, e.g., from Amazon soon. Additional material will be drawn from selected research publications.

Prerequisites:
The course requires undergraduate-level operating systems and networking knowledge, such as CIS 3800 and NETS 212 (or the equivalence). You should also be proficient in C or C++ programming.

Workload:
The course will involve three substantial programming assignments, a group project, and two midterms. Both the programming assignments and the project involve a considerable amount of programming in C/C++, and the project requires the ability to work with your classmates in teams.

Grading:
Your letter grade will be based on the individual programming assignments (35%), the group project (30%), the midterm exams (30%), and participation (5%).

Attendance and other policies:
Class attendance is mandatory and will count towards your participation score. More details on attendance and key course policies can be found here.


Resources

We will be using Ed Discussion for all course-related discussions.

Homework assignments and project are available for download from the assignments page. You can submit your solutions online via GradeScope.

Special sessions

The goal of the special sessions is to provide you with tools and resources that might be useful for the assignments and project. See the special sessions page for more details.

Tentative schedule

Date Topic Details Reading Remarks
Jan 18 Introduction [pdf] [video] Course overview
Policies
Chapter 1  
Jan 23 Processes and threads [pdf] [video] Basic concepts
The UNIX model
Implementation in the kernel
Chapter 3.1 (Sections 1+2) HW0
Jan 25 System calls [pdf] [video #1] [video #2] System calls
The file API
Kernel entry/exit
  HW0 due (on 1/26); HW1
Jan 30 +
Feb 1
Concurrency control [pdf] [video #1] [video #2] Synchronization primitives
Race conditions, critical sections
Deadlock and starvation
   
Feb 6 Synchronization [pdf] [video] Semaphores
Classical synchronization problems
Monitors and condition variables
[Hoare monitors]
[Mesa monitors]
 
Feb 8+13 Communication [pdf] [video] Sockets
Socket programming
Handling multiple connections
Chapters 4.1+4.3 HW1 due; HW2
Feb 15+20 Remote Procedure Calls [pdf] [video #1] [video #2] Programming model
Stub code; marshalling; binding
Handling failures
Chapters 4.2+8.3  
Feb 22 Naming [pdf] [video #1] [video #2] Kinds of names; name spaces
The Domain Name System;
Akamai; DNSSEC
Chapter 6 HW2MS1 due (on 2/21)
Feb 27 Last day to drop  
Feb 27+29 Clock synchronization [pdf] [video #1] [video #2] [video #3] Logical clocks
NTP and Berkeley algorithms
Lamport and vector clocks
Chapters 5.1+5.2  
Mar 2-10 Spring break
Mar 12 Group communication [pdf] [video] Reliable multicast
IP multicast
FIFO, causal and total ordering
Chapter 8.4 HW2MS2+3 due (3/11); HW3
Mar 14 First midterm exam
Mar 19 Replication Primary/backup protocols
Quorum protocols
Sequential and causal consistency
Client-centric models
Chapter 7 Project
Mar 21 Bigtable and Project Bigtable case study
Project overview
[Bigtable]  
Mar 26 Fault tolerance 2PC and 3PC
Logging and recovery
Chandy-Lamport algorithm
Chapters 8.5+8.6;  
Mar 28 State-machine replication Failure models
The Consensus problem
Paxos
Chapters 8.1+8.2; [Paxos] HW3 due
April 2 Last day to withdraw
April 2 Non-crash Fault Tolerance The Byzantine Generals problem
Impossibility results
Solutions
[BFT]  
Apr 4 Distributed coordination Distributed mutual exclusion
Leader election
Bully algorithm; token ring
Chapter 5.3+5.4  
Apr 9 Distributed file systems NFS
Coda
Disconnected operation
Chapter 2.3.3; [Coda]  
Apr 11 Google File System Google cluster architecture
Reading and writing in GFS
Consistency and fault tolerance
[Cluster] [GFS]  
Apr 16 MapReduce MapReduce programming model
System architecture
[MapReduce]  
Apr 18 Spark Differences to MapReduce
RDDs
Case study: PageRank
[RDD] [Spark]  
Apr 23 +
April 25
DHTs and Dynamo Distributed hash tables
The CAP dilemma
Amazon Dynamo
[Dynamo]  
Apr 30 Second midterm exam
May 2-5 Reading days
May 6-14 Project demos and reports
Web site contact: Linh Thi Xuan Phan