18-843: Systems of Active Components

18-843 will be an advanced graduate course that targets the development of research directions in "systems of active components". With increasing transistor densities and the proliferation of low-cost, low-power processing elements, many researchers (and advanced development people in industry) are exploring programmability and increased functionality in various system components. The term "Active Component" is a generalization of various research notions being explored: active networks, active disks, intelligent network interface cards, intelligent RAM, etc. This course will explore all of these areas and will consider issues (e.g., security, reliability, programmability) that are common to all of them.

Approach

Critical evaluation and discussion of related work. This will include student presentations, student leadership of and participation in discussions, and student-written surveys/reviews.

A series of student-defined, student-executed, inter-related projects in areas that explore the design and use of active components.

Topics covered

18-843 will focus mainly on networking- and storage-oriented systems and the relocation of functionality (statically or dynamically) amongst "Active" system components. Related work examined will include research from distributed systems, mobile code systems, function migration, embedded systems, replication, security, protection, operating systems, networking, transactions, and application systems.

Project

The projects can be done in groups of varying size (there is a lot of flexibility here). The key is that each person involved in a project should have an identifiable aspect that they "own". Also, an explicit goal of this course is for the projects to build on and contribute to each other. This means that sharing of infrastructure is desirable. Suggestions for project topics will be provided by the staff, but you are free to make your own proposal for a project. Projects may overlap with the research for your Masters/PhD thesis research (if said research is in the area of active component systems and your advisor does not mind).

Mechanics

• Class meets once a week to discuss related work:
  • Before coming to class, all students will have read the 2-4 selected papers on the chosen topic of the week.
  • One student gives a 20-30 minute presentation on the topic (not the papers) as it relates to Systems of Active Components.
  • The rest of the class meeting is devoted to discussion of the topic and associated ideas.
  • After class, the presenter writes up a summary of the papers and discussion, collecting the papers' concepts and the class's thoughts about them.
  • A second student, the assigned reviewer, will take notes on the discussion during class and provide feedback on the presentation and the written summary.
  • The presenter iterates the write-up and fixes presentation problems.
• Class meets once a week to discuss project ideas, progress, and shared infrastructure development:
  • Students will present their research ideas, generating discussion and prompting peer feedback.
  • Early in the term, this will largely consist of brain-storming about projects and infrastructure.
  • As term goes on, this will shift towards sharing of early results, describing infrastructure, and giving feedback to each other.
• Students are required to write several pieces of text:
  • One-page time-lines and progress reports.
  • A 5-page (or so) related work summary of papers and discussion.
  • A 10-page research paper summarizing the project.
• Grading:
  • Participation in class
  • Quality of in-class related work presentation
  • Quality of related work summary
  • Quality of feedback given to peers
  • Quality of in-class project proposal presentation
  • Quality of time-line and progress reports
  • Quality of project write-up

Prereqs

This course will start very fast -- it will assume that the students have:

• broad and deep backgrounds in computer systems
• pre-existing experience with critical evaluation of research papers
• pre-existing experience with working on research projects in a group environment
• a strong desire to push very hard on research projects in active component systems (for this one, we'll just take your word ;)).

Getting In