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.

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

When and where:
Mondays/Wednesday 10:15-11:45am, Towne 100

Teaching assistants and office hours:

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 of the previous version of the book are available, e.g., from Amazon. Additional material will be drawn from selected research publications.

Prerequisites:
The course requires undergraduate-level operating systems and networking knowledge, such as CIS 4480 (formerly CIS 3800) and NETS 2120 (or CIS 5530) or the equivalence. You must 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 (30%), the group project (35%), 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.

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.

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.