CS349D: Cloud Computing Technology

Instructors: Christos Kozyrakis and Matei Zaharia

TA: Qian Li

Autumn 2018, Mon/Wed 10:30 AM - 12:20 PM, room 200-030

3 units

Piazza: Class Homepage, Signup Link

The largest change in the computer industry over the past five years has arguably been the emergence of cloud computing: organizations are increasingly moving their workloads to managed public clouds and using new, global-scale services that were simply not possible in private datacenters. However, both building and using cloud systems remains a black art with many difficult research challenges. This research seminar will cover industry and academic work on cloud computing and survey key technical issues. Students will read and discuss a paper per class meeting and do a quarter-long project in groups of 2-3.

Grading: The main evaluation will be around a project that students propose and execute during the course. Apart from that, each student is expected to present one of the papers and to participate in class. The grading rubric will be 70% project, 15% paper presentation and 15% participation.

Schedule

Class Format: You will need to fill out a Google form with answers to a few summary questions before each class starts. The form will be emailed to students each week. During class, one or two students will spend 10-15 minutes presenting the day's paper, and will then lead the subsequent discussion. Another student will take notes on the presentation and discussion.

Class Presentations/Notes Google Folder: If you are assigned to take notes for a class, please take the notes in a Google Doc and add them to this folder once you are done. If you are presenting, please put Google Slides for your presentation in this folder. Request write permissions to the folders by clicking on the "CS 349D-Aut1819-Notes/Presentations" dropdown, then the "Share" item, then the "Advanced" button in the lower right corner.

Each student will be assigned a paper to present during the class. You should prepare a 10-15 minute presentation on the paper. In your presentation, cover each of the following:

Problem: What is the paper trying to solve? How real is the problem?

Key idea: What is the main idea in the solution?

Novelty: What is different from previous work, and why? Is it a new problem, a new solution, or a new environment for an existing problem?

Critique: Is there anything you would change in the solution? What about in the way the authors presented or evaluated the solution?

Students will propose and run a quarter-long project, ideally in groups of 2-3. It is fine to use your existing research project if it is relevant to the course and the instructor approves. You will present the project at the end of the course and write a 10-12 page report. See here for a list of project ideas.



Project timeline:

Project proposal: October 15th

Mid-term review: Nov 7-9th

Presentation: in class on December 5th

Final report: 11:59 PM on December 9th

See here for instructions for instructions on each phase of the project.

Adapted from a template by Andreas Viklund.