Assignments

Small Experiment
The first assignment, done individually or in pairs, is to try to quantify one of the potential  benefits of Intelligent Disks or Intelligent Main Memory. A list of initial experiment suggestions will appear on this page. The paper and presentation should have some quantitative evaluation.

Pointers to results from Assignment 1:

  •  Snap vs. Linux : compare performance of an appliance  (Snap! NFS Server) to a standard PC (Linux NFS Server) using the xFS microbenchmarks and the Andrew benchmark.
  •  OS Bakeoff for ISTORE  : Comparing Linix, QNX,  NT for OS benchmarks
  •  Network Appliance Survey  :  A survey of existing (or former) products loosely categorized as "network appliances".
  •  Post-PC-Era Research in the Berkeley EECS Department : A survey of research projects which are forming the foundation of the post-pc era
  •  Index of /~randit/slides : Investigation of errors recorded from 6 months of Tertiary Disk operation of 395 disks, 20 PCs
  •  IDISK : An alternative design to IRAM with the  the disk controllers on the same die as the processor and memory plus a new organization of the disk drive


    • Big Idea
    Researchers have been criticized recently for not thinking about big research ideas, putting their projects being barely ahead of commercial developments. Perhaps this is because we're not asked to do things like this in grad school?

    This second assignment, done individually or in pairs, is to Think Big!

    Our focus is on the next computer generation, the so-called "Post-PC Era". Discuss some of the big issues that must be addressed as part of the next revolution: benchmarks, legacy code, requirements for new businesses in this era, ...

    This page last updated on November 12, 1998.