Engineering Distributed Systems

Catalog description

This course is for students with strong design and implementation skills who are likely to pursue careers as software architects and lead engineers. It may be taken by well-prepared undergraduates with excellent design and implementation skills in low-level systems programing. The course assumes a high level of proficiency in all aspects of operating system design and implementation. This course will help students prepare for leadership roles in creating and evolving the complex, large-scale computer systems that society will increasingly depend on in the future. The course will teach the organizing principles of such systems, identifying a core set of versatile techniques that are applicable across many system layers. Students will acquire the knowledge base, intellectual tools, hands-on skills and modes of thought needed to build well-engineered computer systems that withstand the test of time, growth in scale, and stresses of live use. Topics covered include: caching, prefetching, damage containment, scale reduction, hints, replication, hash-based techniques, and fragmentation reduction. A substantial project component is an integral part of the course. A high level of proficiency in systems programming is expected. Please refer to course website for the most recent schedule updates. Course Website: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~csd-grad/courseschedules14.html