CIS 5050: Software Systems (Spring 2023)
Overview
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, and its final exam qualifies as one of the WPE-I exams in the PhD program.
Logistics
Instructor:
Linh Thi Xuan Phan
Office hours: Tuesdays 12-1pm (Levine 576)
When and where:
Tuesdays/Thursdays 10:15-11:45am, LRSM Auditorium
Teaching assistants and office hours:
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Jingyi Li | Mondays 10:00-11:30am (Levine 601 bump space) |
Anirudh Konduru | Mondays 2-3pm (Levine 612) + Wednesdays 2-3pm (Levine 601 bump space) |
Yumika Amemiya | Mondays 4:00-5:00pm (Levine 501 bump space) |
David Xu | Mondays 3:00-5:00pm (Levine 501 bump space) |
Kevin Yang | Tuesdays 3:30-4:30pm (Levine 601 bump space) |
Lifu Zhang | Tuesdays 2:00-3:30pm + Wednesdays 2:00-3:00pm (Levine 501 bump space) |
Chanseo Bae | Wednesdays 12:30-2:00pm (OHQ) |
Ling-Hsin Kung | Wednesdays 9:00-11:00am (Levine 6th floor bump space) |
Andrew Wang | Thursdays 12:30-1:30pm (Levine 601 bump space) |
Jeng-Ru Wu | Thursdays 4:00-5:30pm (Levine 612) |
Aditya Bhati | Thursdays 5:00-6:00pm (Levine 501 bump space) |
Yujuan Song | Fridays 10:00-11:00am (Levine 5th floor bump space) |
Maxwell Du | Fridays 2:00-3:00pm (Levine 601 bump space) |
Kevin Chen | Fridays 3:00-4:00pm (Levine 501 bump space) |
Yilin Guo | Saturdays 10:00am-11:00am (OHQ) |
Akriti Gupta | Sundays 9:00am-11:00am (OHQ) |
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:
Class attendance is mandatory and will count towards your participation score. The participation score will be computed
based on attending lectures, answering questions in class, and answering questions on Ed Discussion.
Masks:
Masks are required for all class-related activities, including lectures, office hours, exams, special sessions and project demos.
Resources
We will be using Ed Discussion for all course-related discussions.
Homework assignments and project are available for download; you can
submit your solution online. If necessary,
you can request an extension for your homeworks.
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.
PennCloud Award

Hanbang Wang, Namita Shukla, Benedict Florance Arockiaraj, and Andrew Zhao
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In certain years, we provide the PennCloud Award to project teams with the most impressive final projects. In the last Fall 2022, the award went to Hanbang Wang, Namita Shukla, Benedict Florance Arockiaraj, and Andrew Zhao. The team presented an excellent fault-tolerant PennCloud platform that is well-done in every aspect. The platform supports a complete set of services with an intuitive user interface, including e.g., a webmail service for both local and remote users, a storage service for uploading and downloading of large files in any format, and an admin console for viewing and easy controlling of frontend and backend nodes' status and data. Foundational to these services, the platform also features a solid, scalable system design with strong consistency, efficient fault detection and recovery, fast performance and great usability.

Example services of the winning project.
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You can read more about past winners and their projects in the CIS5050 Hall of Fame.
Schedule (Tentative)
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