Goal

The primary goal of a group research project (2 students in one group) in this class is to address an intriguing and non-trivial issue of distributed systems. Your project can be conducted in various forms such as a survey or research paper. Your group-oriented project has to be a significant research study. A project is intended to synergize with a student's research interests by addressing an aspect of the student's current research work or allowing the student to do some preliminary investigation of a master thesis topic. The project aims at providing a great opportunity to the student to investigate an issue to which he/she may not otherwise devote efforts and time.
To understand what is a computer science research project, please read "A Letter to Research Students" from Prof. Duane A. Bailey
To have a rough idea about a compuer science research paper, please read this article (only the first 4 pages and Section 4 and Section 5)"File assignment in parallel I/O systems with Minimal Variance of Service Time"  

Project Proposal

You must submit a project proposal and have it approved. The process is described below.

1. Email me one paragraph or two, describing (1) your proposed project; (2) each team member's name and email address (Due Friday, Feb. 2 by 11:59pm)
2. If the proposal is approved, go to step 3. Otherwise, go back to step 1.
3. Email me a short proposal (about 2-4 pages) in Microsoft DOC format that provides detailed information pertinent to your project. Also, submit a printed version in class (5%). (Due on Feb. 19 Monday in class )
4. Conduct your research project.
5. Email me an intermediate report in Microsoft DOC format that summarizes what you have done one month after the due date of proposal. Also, submit a printed version in class (5%).(2 pages in IEEE 2-column format, Due on April 2 Wednesday in class )
6. Email me a technical report in both Microsoft DOC format and PDF format describing the project and the experimental results before 5:30 pm on December 5. Also, submit a printed version in class (20%). (Due Monday, April 30 in class )
7. Group presentation (10%). (April 30, May 2 )

Note that the proposal, the intermediate report, and the final paper must be formatted  in the standard in 2-column IEEE proceedings format. 

Please download instructions, a sample report (DOC format), a sample manuscript (PDF format), and Project Report Evaluation Policy.

Sample Simulation Code for Greedy and SP algorithms
Sample Synthetic Trace Generator Code for Greedy and SP algorithms

          Please download the Guide for Writing Project Proposals here.
A sample proposal here;
A sample intermediate report here;
The best proposal in cs666 Spring 2008 class here;
The best project report in cs666 Spring 2008 class here. 

Sample Project Ideas

You are required to pick one of the following sub-areas listed below:

• 1. Develop New Data Placement Algorithms
• 2. Develop New Data Replication Schemes
• 3. Energy-Saving Hard Disk Based Storage Systems
• 4. Disk Failure Analysis and Reliability Estimation
• 5. Integrating NAND Flash Based Solid State Disks (SSD) into Server-Class Storage Systems
• 6. Security-Aware Real-Time Scheduling
• 7. Energy-Efficient Task Allocation
• 8. Grid Computing
• 9. Study the Performance of Distributed File Systems
• 10. Evaluate the Performance of Peer-to-Peer Systems
• 11. Study Fault-Tolerant Algorithms for Distributed Systems
• 12. Study Ubiquitous Computing Sample Papers for CS666 Research Project

Research Group

            This is a group project with no more than 3 students in a group.