| Date | Topics | Notes | Readings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon 8/24 dga | Introduction | Wisdom papers | KeshavHowToRead, StentHowToRead, LevisHowToRead, Hamming86, Lampson83 |
| Part 1: Concurrency, Threads, Parallelism, Ordering, and Races | |||
| Wed 8/26 dga | Implementing remote procedure calls | SigOps HoF paper. Optional: Chen2023. | Saltzer84, Birrell84 |
| Fri 8/28 dga | EnsÅ: A Streaming Interface for NIC-Application Communication | OSDI '23 Best Paper | Sadok23 |
| Mon 8/31 dga | Using Threads in Interactive Systems: A Case Study | Hauser93 | |
| Wed 9/2 dga | Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System | SigOps HoF paper | Lamport78 |
| Part 2: More bugs than a bait store | |||
| Fri 9/4 dga | Eraser: A Dynamic Data Race Detector for Multi-Threaded Programs | SOSP'97 best paper. Bugs as Deviant Behavior (SOSP'01). | Savage97 |
| Mon 9/7 | No Class - Labor Day | ||
| Wed 9/9 dga | IronFleet: Proving Practical Distributed Systems Correct | A discussion in The Morning Paper. | Hawblitzel15 |
| Part 3: File Systems and Disks | |||
| Fri 9/11 dga | AFS | Leases paper. SigOps HoF papers | Howard88 |
| Mon 9/14 dga | The Design and Implementation of a Log-Structured File System | SigOps HoF paper. | Rosenblum92 |
| Wed 9/16 dga | A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) | SigOps HoF paper. Fast'07 best paper. | Patterson88, Schroeder07 |
| Part 4: Big Data Systems | |||
| Fri 9/18 dga | MapReduce and Ray | SigOps HoF paper. For more see Spark, Nyad, and Dryad. | Dean04, Moritz18 |
| Mon 9/21 | No Class - Yom Kippur | ||
| Wed 9/23 dga | Barbarians at the Gate and KernelBench-Verified | Optional extras: AlphaEvolve and Glia. | Barbarians at the Gate, KernelBench-Verified |
| Part 5: Kernels and Parallelism | |||
| Fri 9/25 dga | OS Architecture and Extensibility: SPIN and the Exokernel | SOSP'97 paper. SigOps HoF paper. Original Exokernel paper Multikernel (SOSP'09). | Bershad95, Kaashoek97 |
| Mon 9/28 dga | Fast, Flexible, and Practical Kernel Extensions | SOSP'24 | Dwivedi24 |
| Wed 9/30 | Project Discussions (in class) | ||
| Fri 10/2 dga | Fault Tolerance: Primary-Backup State Machine Replication | VMFT | |
| Mon 10/5 dga | Paxos | Wikipedia Paxos article. Lamport's original Greek parable Lamport's comments on original paper.. | Lamport01 |
| Wed 10/7 | Midterm Review (no lecture) | You're welcome to use the classroom or do this on your own, dga will not be there. | |
| Fri 10/9 | Midterm 1 | ||
| Mon 10/12 | No Class - Fall Break | ||
| Wed 10/14 | No Class - Fall Break | ||
| Fri 10/16 | No Class - Fall Break | ||
| Mon 10/19 dga | The (current) Limits of LLMs for Systems | Slow Software, Can LLMs model real-world systems in TLA+? | |
| Wed 10/21 | Project Meetings | ||
| Fri 10/23 | No class | ||
| Part 6: Transactions and Databases | |||
| Mon 10/26 dga | On Optimistic Methods for Concurrency Control | SigOps HoF paper. Spectulative Execution in a Distributed File System Efficient Locking for Concurrent Operations on B-Trees | Kung81 |
| Wed 10/28 | No class | ||
| Fri 10/30 | Project Meetings (all day) | ||
| Mon 11/2 dga | Concurrency Control and Recovery | Bernstein's concurrency notes - MVCC, Coordination Avoidance | Franklin97 |
| Wed 11/4 | No class | ||
| Part 7: Generalized Fault Tolerance and Security | |||
| Fri 11/6 dga | The Byzantine Generals Problem | Lamport's comments on the Byzantine Generals paper. | Lamport82, Castro99 |
| Mon 11/9 | No class | ||
| Wed 11/11 dga | Reflections on Trusting Trust, Why Cryptosystems Fail, Crisis and Aftermath | SigOps HoF paper. Write Summary only for Anderson94. | Thompson84, Anderson94, Spafford89 |
| Fri 11/13 | No class. | ||
| Mon 11/16 | No Class | ||
| Wed 11/18 | Highlights from the SOSP15 History Day Talks | SOSP15 History Day. | |
| Fri 11/20 | Effective Presentations | Ware24, PLMW24 | |
| Mon 11/23 | No Class - Early Thanksgiving Break | ||
| Wed 11/25 | No Class - Thanksgiving Break | ||
| Fri 11/27 | No Class - Thanksgiving Break | ||
| Mon 11/30 | Project Presentations | ||
| Wed 12/2 | Project Presentations | ||
| Fri 12/4 | Midterm 2, Date Time And Location TBA | ||
| Fri 12/4 | Final Report Due by 11:59pm | ||
Last updated: 2026-08-27