Course Overview

Overview

Welcome to the graduate course on distributed systems! This course will introduce you to an exciting range of materials in this broad and hugely important field, including communication, how systems fail, the nature of time, and a wide range of important techniques and case studies about this fascinating area of study.

This course assumes familiarity with systems, including how operating systems work (CS 537 and this book of course), how networks work (CS 640), how computer hardware functions (CS 354 and maybe 552). The course also assumes some graduate-level sophistication, especially in the form of CS 736 (a prerequisite). The 736 prerequisite is there for two reasons: (1) to ensure you already have a good idea about how systems work and (2) to ensure you have the skills needed to read complex papers and make sense of them. If you don't have this background, you need special permission from me (the instructor) to be in the course.

The course also assumes you can program in systems languages (e.g., C, C++, or maybe Go) and deal with complicated systems without much hand-holding. There is usually little or no TA support, and thus, when you must get something working, you must rely on that most important of resources: yourself.

Materials

This course is just based on readings, listed in the schedule which is found on the right of the main page. That's it! But, it's a lot of a reading, so get ready to read some papers this semester.

Mailing Lists

Important announcements will be sent to the class mailing list (compsci739-1-f16@lists.wisc.edu) as well as posted to the web page, so please read your mail frequently! You are responsible for the material sent to that list. Note that the class list is automatically generated based on who is enrolled in the class; if you are not enrolled (yet), check the main web page for updates, etc.

Homework Questions

Every class day will focus on one or two or three papers, which you should read BEFORE class. To help encourage this excellent habit, we provide you with a daily reading question which you must answer by 9am (or so) the day of class. Directions for how to hand in the daily answer are found on said webpage. Make sure to check the question page regularly.

Assignments

There will be a few programming assignments to get you warmed up and going this semester. They will be linked from the main page and due about 2+ weeks from the day they are assigned. In these assignments, you will learn hands-on what it is to build distributed systems, usually with one partner (or maybe two).

Projects

The most important work outside of class will be the final project. This will form a large part of your grade, and is also done with a partner or two. Projects are the beginning of your venture into the world of research, and thus will be open-ended explorations of some kind. More information on final projects will be given about half-way through the semester.

Exams

There will be some exams to test your knowledge. The exams will be closed book, and will cover material from class (mostly) and assignments.

Midterm: Monday 10/24 @ 7:15pm-9:15pm in 1240 CS.

Grades

Grades should not be your main focus in graduate school, but, because you are students and will ask, here is a rough breakdown of how that will work. Homework questions will be worth 10%-20% of your grade; assignments will be worth 10%-20%; exams will be worth 30%-40%; the final project will be worth 30%-40%. That's about as specific as we will get, sorry!