In this assignment, you will have to sign up for a face-to-face meeting with me either Tuesday 11/6 or Monday 11/12 to discuss the points mentioned above. Come prepared, as this counts as part of your overall project grade. Expect to meet for 10 to 15 minutes.
The first step towards a successful project is a sound infrastructure within which to work. Make sure to have everything that you need in place by this time -- preferably, this will be finished before the status meeting.
Note:
By infrastructure, I mean a solid base towards the final goal. For example, if you are going to study caching policies via a simulation, it would be good to have the simulation environment in place and working. Or if you are building a new interface to a file system, it would be good to have studied the kernel and have a good plan as to how to proceed, or to even have made some initial progress on modifying the system. This does
not
mean the entire implementation of whatever it is you are doing!
Related Work
Related work is an important part of any research effort. Find and study as many papers as you can that are related to what you are doing. Take notes, and even start sketching out how you would write a "related work" section in your final paper.
A good related work section is more than a laundry list - you should really try to "synthesize" and "categorize". That is, you should be try to put together other people's work in your own viewpoint, and in a more general frame of thought. Remember to emphasize what has been done in the past, and more importantly what hasn't. Look through some of the papers we have read in class for good examples.
Evaluation
Finally, all good projects will have a good empirical evaluation to them. It is not just enough to build "it" and assume "it" will work. You have to measure it! For this assignment, start writing down ideas on how you would measure what you are doing, and be ready to discuss them.
Initial Results
If you have really gotten going (like you should have), you would have some initial results. First graphs from a prototype system or simulator, or measurements of an existing system to justify what you are doing. The more results you have, the more feedback you will get from me on what you should be doing (and what you should avoid).