Large Scale Concurrent Systems

Year
1

Academic year
2014-2015

Code
03003168

Subject Area
Optional Specialties

Language of Instruction
Portuguese

Other Languages of Instruction
English

Mode of Delivery
Face-to-face

Duration
SEMESTRIAL

ECTS Credits
6.0

Type
Elective

Level
3rd Cycle Studies

Recommended Prerequisites

It is assumed that students have undergraduate-level knowledge of Programming, Operating Systems, and Database Systems.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the course the students should fulfill three major goals:

- Have a strong understanding of the architectural trade-offs involved in building a large scale concurrent system.

- Have a major hands-on experience building and measuring a system where consistency, availability and scalability are major considerations.

- Know the current state-of-the-art currently guiding concurrency and distributed computing as it relates to scalable systems.

It is also intended that the student acquires/develops the following 5 core competencies (according to the Dublin descriptors):

- Teamwork, problem solving, critical thinking, independent learning and practical application of theoretical knowledge;

and the following 5 secondary competencies:

-Analysis and synthesis, creativity, initiative and entrepreneurial spirit, concern for quality and planning and acting skills.

Work Placement(s)

Syllabus

- Distributed Computing
      * Fundamental notions of distributed systems
      * Programming distributed systems
      * Distributed file systems
      * Shared Memory Systems
- Concurrency
      * Run-time environments
- Data Processing
      * Parallel and distributed databases
      * Load balancing
      * Large-scale parallel systems
- Concurrency
      * Models of concurrent systems
      * Software Transactional Memory
- Hot Topics
      * Looking forward: emerging topics

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Homeworks: 10.0%
Final exam : 25.0%
Final grade : 25.0%
Project: 40.0%

Bibliography

(- G. Coulouris, J. Dollimore, T. Kindberg. "Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design", 4th Edition, ISBN 0321263545, Addison Wesley, 2005.
- N. Lynch, “Distributed Algorithms”, ISBN 1558603484, Morgan Kaufmann, 1996.
- J. Larus and R. Rajwar, “Transactional Memory”, ISBN 1598291246, Morgan & Claypool Pub., 2007.
- Many research papers.