1. CS510 Concurrent Systems
Jonathan Walpole

2. Course Overview

3. About the Instructor Instructor – Jonathan Walpole Professor at PSU
Research Interests: Operating Systems, Parallel and Distributed Systems

4. Course Overview Based on ~20 research papers Class structure
Read them carefully!
Submit a written review of each paper BEFORE class!
Class structure
Lectures including some student presentations
Instructor-led discussion
Course web page

5. Topics Concurrency, race conditions and synchronization
Locking at application and kernel level
Non-blocking synchronization and lock-free algorithms
Things that complicate lock-free algorithms
- Hardware and compiler-level reordering
- Memory reclamation
Relativistic programming via RCU
Transactional memory
Comparison of approaches

6. Grade Structure Paper reviews - 10% Midterm exam - 25%
In-class paper presentation - 20%
Final exam - 25%
Position paper - 20%

7. Paper Presentations Contact me for a paper assignment
- assignments will be posted on the web page
Your presentation
You must understand the paper
talk to me and do necessary background reading!
Prepare a formal presentation with slides
Emphasize key ideas, not irrelevant details
It should last ~40 minutes
Send me a draft presentation in time for me to review it and give you feedback

8. Position Papers Short paper (<1500 words) Your chance to summarize
current research trends in concurrent systems
future directions
By the end of this class you should have a clear understanding of research directions and challenges
I want to know what you think, not a straight summary of the papers we have studied

9. Before Class 2 Visit the class web page
Find your first paper assignment
Contact me with preferences
I will post them before Wednesday
me if there is a problem!
Read paper for class 2
Submit paper reviews as directed on the class web site