Advances in Distributed Systems
ECE 1746, Fall 2004
University of Toronto
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Project Format
The goal of the project is to encourage students to explore some aspect
of distributed systems in detail. Some guidelines for choosing a
project are: 1) the work should be in an area related to distributed
systems (e.g., look at the topics for each week), 2) the work should be
completed in less than three months, and 3) talk to the instructor and
get a verbal agreement about a project before committing to it.
Students have two project options: 1) design and implementation of a
system, or 2) writing a position paper. For the implementation option,
2-3 students should collaborate on the project. Make sure that the
project is structured so that you can evaluate the system
quantitatively. This option has the deliverables described below. Each
of these deliverables is per-project (and not per-student).
Note that each future deliverable contains much of the contents of the
previous deliverables.
- Project Description: 1 page (Due Oct 5, 2004)
- Purpose of the project
- Expected outcome or result of the project
- Three or more intermediate steps in the project
- Status Report: 3-4 pages (Due Nov 2, 2003)
- Purpose of the project
- Expected outcome or result of the project
- Background research with bibliography of relevant research
- Research methodology or approach taken in the project
- Status of implementation
- Experiments that will be performed
- Final Report: 8-10 pages (Due Dec 9, 2003 - Deadline extended)
- Purpose of the project
- Expected outcome or result of the project
- Background research with bibliography of relevant research
- Details of the research methodology or approach taken in the
project
- Status of implementation
- Evaluation results
- Conclusion: did your results meet expectations
- Future work
- Code
The second option, the position paper option, is for individuals.
Students should pick an area of distributed systems such as the topics
discussed each week. First, they should conduct detailed background
research and cover as much literature as possible. Then they should
compare the approaches and discuss the benefits or drawbacks of each.
Finally they should come up with their "position". Your position should
be a novel statement based on solid background research and sound
judgement that you articulate clearly. Your position should not be
obvious from the papers or background research. In other words, the
position paper option encourages research (and not just a survey of
previous work). Since there is no implementation with this option, the
grading will be stricter regarding the quality of the final report and
the novelty of your idea.
There are three main differences in the deliverables with this option
compared to the implementation option: 1) since implementation and
evaluation will not exist, you don't have to include it, 2) the
background research should be more thorough and 3) the focus of the
paper should be on the details of your approach which should clearly
justify your position, i.e. your novel statement. Think of this option
as a proposal for your research. If you are already conducting research
in an area that is somewhat related to distributed systems, this option
is a great way to force yourself to put your thoughts clearly on paper.
If you are not conducting research yet, it will help you get started.
At the end of the term, there will be a presentation for each project
or position paper. The date for this presentation tentatively is
Dec 9, 2004.