CSE 60771/40771
Distributed Systems
Spring 2010

Prof. Douglas Thain


Here is a brief description of the class. Syllabus and more information to follow.

This class will introduces students to the theory and practice of building large scale computer systems that harness hundreds or thousands for machines to attack problems of enormous scale. Such distributed systems are necessary to solve problems of such large size that they cannot complete in any reasonable time on a single machine. These systems are known variously as clusters, clouds, and grids.

Students in this class will gain experience using several large scale distributed systems deployed at Notre Dame and other partner institutions around the country. Each assignment will involve writing code or constructing a system that harnesses hundreds to thousands of machines.

Students will gain experience with the following open source systems, some of which are developed at Notre Dame:

  • Condor - Harnessing idle cycles from computers around the worl.
  • Hadoop - Processes large amounts of data on parallel disks.
  • Parrot and Chirp - Enables transparent access to data worldwide.
  • Work Queue - A C framework for writing massively parallel programs.
  • Makeflow - A coordination language for data intensive applications.
  • Eucalyptus - An open source implementation of the Amazon computing cloud.
    • This will be a highly practical class, and should be enjoyable to any student who likes to write lots of code and make real systems work. Many students who take this class end up using these tools in their daily work. The class is open to juniors, seniors, and graduate students.