CS4412: Introduction to Distributed Computing (CS capstone course)

Spring 2015

Instructor: Ken Birman, 435 Gates Hall.  ken@cs.cornell.edu; 607-255-9199

Description: CS4412 is intended as the first in what should ultimately be a menu of "capstone" courses; someday, our hope is that every CS major at Cornell will take at least one such course here.  As the name suggests, these classes try to pull together insights you have gained in a number of prior courses and to apply the resulting integrated perspective to hard problems in various areas within CS as a whole.  For CS 4412 in spring of 2015 the focus will be on distributed computing; future systems offerings may shift this somewhat depending on the instructor, and there will ultimately be capstones in other areas too, such as machine learning, graphics, theory, etc.

The class will be limited to 50 students with a strong bias towards Cornell CS undergraduate majors who have done well in systems courses such as cs3410 and cs4410.  Non-CS students may request permission to enroll from Professor Birman, but permission is not automatic.  We do not recommend CS 4412 for students who struggled in CS 4410, or who don't really love systems.

Style:  Each week, Professor Birman will assign the class a "distributed computing puzzle" to solve.  The next week we'll discuss the solutions people came up with, and then will read a classic research paper or two on the underlying questions that these puzzles reveal.  Grading will be based on:

• Written solutions to the weekly problems.
• A single prelim exam
• A final exam
• Other factors such as participation in discussion during class.

The specific problems we'll consider include theoretical aspects, protocol and concurrency issues, and performance challenges. 

For a course such as this participation is absolutely mandatory.  If people seem to be skipping class we'll develop some way of tracking attendance.  Exams will strongly reflect the material covered in class, and because we won't be posting slide sets or lecture notes, if you don't attend it will be nearly impossible to do well on them.

Prior work on programming languages and logic can be useful preparation for CS 4412, although not mandatory.

Letter grades only (no S/U or audit)