1. 1 ECE7995 Computer Storage and Operating System Design Instructor: Dr. Song Jiang The ECE Department Lecture: Tuesday/Thursday 10:00pm --- 11:50pm 0199 MANO

2. 2 What is the course about? Learn how the OS works in managing storage devices/systems.  Storage devices/systems are a shared resource and their used must be coordinated among multiple apps/users.  The OS plays the essential role in serving I/O requests from apps. Get an overview of OS design and insightful view of I/O system.  Look at design and implementation of real-life file systems. Learn state-of-the-art storage/fs system architectures  Get insights of how storage devices are inter-connected and managed. Have a taste of what the research in the CS/CE area looks like  Get involved in the research projects presented as case studies Learn with dirty hands  You are guided to obtain hands-on experience though Linux kernel hacking, though this is not a programming course.

3. 3 Why you should take the course Computer storage industry is burgeoning  The Enterprise Storage sector solely is a $65 billion market (2005 data)  Major players: IBM, HP, Dell, EMC, Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital,….  Most institutions and companies need people with expertise on data storage, retrieval, backup, and storage system managements. Data access is highly likely to be a performance bottleneck in today’s information processing (memory-intensive / data-intensive apps)  memory: 1-10GB/s Hard Disk: 20-100MB/s  How about processor bandwidth? (e.g., assume a 2GBprocessor, 1 instr/cycle, 1B/instr)

4. 4 Why you should take the course Linux is increasingly popular, especially in enterprise-level computing.  Linux rules the Top 500. (Linux machines account for 372 out of the 500 fastest machines, and various Unixes account for other 109 machines, (2005 data))  Most people don’t understand Linux, especially how it works – including sysadmins and computer scientists! Research experience will go a long way for your career development.  The course will provide a path for independent scholarship beyond the semester

5. 5 The Organization of Course (tentative) Part I: Lectures by instructor. Operating system overview File system structures, with an emphasis on caching and prefetching for performance improvements. (case study: Linux VFS as well as ext2 and ext3) Distributed file systems (case study: Google file system, IBM GPFS) Organization of modern storage systems (RAID, NAS, SAN)

6. 6 The Organization of Course (tentative) Part II: Paper reading and presentation by students. Several research papers on the state-of-the-art storage/data system designs are provided for students to read and present. Three to four case studies on on-going research projects related to storage systems  Introduction by instructor  Students read background papers assigned by instructor  Students give presentation on their understanding and progress in the projects.  Students submit their reports on their investigation/research results.

7. 7 Workload on students actively Attend classes and be actively involved. Homework about understanding lectures A preliminary mid-term exam Two Linux kernel hacking labs (step-by-step instructions will be provided, and only basic C programming skills are assumed) Paper reading / notes writing / proposing a small research-oriented project A final project report. Am I ready to tackle them? No strong OS or C programming skills are required in the course. I’ll ensure that all the work is doable for any students. The actual workload differs for students with different background. I’ll give each student individual attention.

8. 8 Course Facts Meet Tuesday/Thursday 10:00am- 11:50am at 199 MANO Check website regularly http://www.ece.eng.wayne.edu/~sjiang/ECE7995-fall-09/ECE7995.htm Send class-related email to sjiang@eng.wayne.edu Office hours: Tuesday/Thursday 1:00pm---2:00pm 3150 Engineering Building

9. 9 Reading Materials Suggested reference book Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, Greg Gagne, Operating System Concepts (7 edition) John Wiley & Sons Will post reading materials/assignments.

10. 10 Late Policy Generally no late submissions will be accepted. Instead, you have two late days:  Self-granted extensions, no need to ask for permission.

11. 11 Grading 30% homework assignments  10% writing homework  20% Linux kernel programming 20% Midterm 35% Presentation and report  10% first presentation (reading and understanding paper)  10% second project presentation (problem to be solved, problem background, problem statement and proposed solution)  15% project report 15% Class participation and discussions. The final will be distributed as A (100-90), A- (89-85), B+(84-80) B (79-75), B-(74-70), C+(69-65), C(64-60), C-(59-55) F (below 55).

12. 12 Honor Code Will be enforced in this class; Avoid plagiarism, copyright infringement, and other types of academic dishonesty. As a rule of thumb, cite the source of both written and verbal contributions to your ideas and products.