Azer Bestavros
Professor
Department of Computer Science
College of Arts & Sciences
Boston University
 

Office: 111 Cummington Street, MCS-276, Boston, MA 02215
Tel: 617.353.9726 / Fax: 617.353.6457 / Email: best @bu.edu

Schedule of Lectures and Assignments

Date

Lecture Topic

Assignments

1/14

A Bird's Eye View of Systems and System Abstractions

 

1/19

Performance Metrics of Computing Systems

 

1/21

Elementary Probability Analysis

#0 [Due 2/02]

1/26

Probability Distributions and Expectations

 

1/28

Elementary Queuing Analysis: The M/M/1 Queuing Model

#1 [Due 2/09]

2/02

Empirical Performance Evaluation: Discrete Event Simulation

 

2/04

Elementary Statistics: Sampling, Estimation, and Confidence Intervals #2 [Due 2/23]

2/09

Elementary Queuing Analysis: Variations on M/M/1 queuing model

 

2/11

Elementary Queuing Analysis: Queuing Networks and Case Studies

#3 [Due 3/02]

2/18

Exam #1  

2/23

Resource Management: Scheduling Fundamentals

 

2/25

Resource Management: Basic Scheduling Algorithms

#4 [Due 3/16]

3/02

Resource Management: Real-Time and Priority-Based Scheduling Algorithms

 

3/04

Resource Management: State-Sensitive (I/O) Scheduling Algorithms

 

3/16

Concurrency and Synchronization: Basics

 

3/18

Mutual Exclusion: Dekker's and Peterson's Algorithms

#5 [Due 3/30]

3/23

Mutual Exclusion: Semaphores  and their implementation

 

3/25

Synchronization: Classical Producer/Consumer and Reader/Writer Problems

#6 [Due 4/06]

3/30

Synchronization: The Barbershop and Dining Philosophers Problems

 

4/01

Synchronization: Deadlock Management

#7 [Due 4/13]

4/06

Synchronization: Transactional Semantics and the ACID Properties  

4/08

Distributed Systems: Synchronization and Serializability #8 [Due 4/20]

4/13

Slack  

4/15

Exam #2 #9 [Due 4/27]

4/20

Distributed Systems: Global Snapshot Problems

 

4/27

Distributed Systems: Network and Cloud abstractions

 

4/29

Wrap-up and Review

 

5/04

Final Exam (3:00pm-5:00pm)

 

Changes to the schedule will be announced in class if need be

Important Dates:

  • Last day to drop the class without a W grade is Thursday 2/18/10

  • Last day to drop the class with a W grade is Monday 4/05/10