CMSC 3530 Adv. Topics on Distributed and Real-Time Systems

Lecture time: Tuesday/Thursday 3:00-4:15pm, Office hours: T,H 2-2:59pm

Daniel Mosse 6243 Sennott Square, 412-624-8923, mosse@cs.pitt.edu

• Purpose of the course

  Real-time systems are those that have timing constraints, and that have a penalty associated with not completing tasks by their deadlines. This course is intented to further the knowledge of distributed and real-time systems development as well as specific issues in the design of these systems. After completing this course, the student will be able to understand and design basic real-time system software.

  In this seminar we will examine several scheduling and allocation techniques, power management issues, security problems, real-time networks, fault tolerance issues in the design and deployment of real-time systems, and other related issues (covering anything that we may find interesting, nothing that we do not find interesting).

• Pre-requisites

  Students are to know basic operating system principles, such as scheduling, processes, response time, deadlocks, critical sections (undergraduate level) and distributed systems concepts such as sockets and basics of network protocols.

• Grading system

  There will be no exams and rarely assignments, except for reading assignments, which will be frequent. The grade for the course will be divided into

  • 15% pop quizzes on the material to be read weekly
  • 25% presentation of 1-3 papers chosen by the student with approval of the instructor (in a single area of interest)
  • 25% class participation
  • 35% project, which can be either of the following (both options include a 5-page, 1.5 spacing, 1-inch margin, 11-pt font, written report):
    • programming project on or in a Real System
    • simulation of a problem, with results of the simulated solution
    • in-depth presentation of a problem, with an analysis of shortcomings and a solution.
    This simple project has an estimated 50-60 hours total work per student. The goal of this project is to produce a workshop-quality paper, with the further objective of publishing a paper. Students are welcome to coordinate projects with their fellow students (up to 2 people per group) in order to make the project more comprehensive.

  
  

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• List of Topics
  • Introduction to real-time systems
  • Resource and application models
  • Concepts of scheduling in real-time systems (including multimedia)
  • Issues and techniques in resource allocation in real-time distributed systems
  • Real-time I/O (including process control and multimedia)
  • Real-time I/O (including process control and multimedia)
  • Fault tolerance techniques for masking and recovery
  • Other real-time related issues
  
  

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• Format of the Course

  This course will begin with the instructor presenting the basic concepts of real-time systems, and relevant issues to give students a strong background in the material. This first part of the course will take approximately 5 weeks. In the next 10 weeks, the students will be responsible for reading, understanding and presenting papers of the student's election (with the help of the instructor, if desired, with approval of the instructor in any case). The papers presented will also be discussed in class by the class.

  The programming part of the course will entail understanding how a real system works, and familiarizing oneself with it. Students may suggest projects, or may take projects suggested by the instructor. Projects may be individual or in groups, depending on the scope and length of the project.

  
  

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• Texts

  No textbook will be required, as we will examine recent papers published in the literature. References will be available in advance.