On Monday September 28, we will announce a list of research paper and will publish it on this page. Each of you will have to select one of them, and will have to read it before the exam.
To this end, we ask each of you to email us a list consisting of three papers in order of preference. We will reply and confirm your choice. The earlier you email us, the more likely we will honor your top choice. You need to send your email by 11.59pm on Sunday October 4. If we do not receive an email by then, we will assign you a paper of our choice. To make sure we do not miss your email, please use the following subject line: BSI-SIF-2020-PaperChoice.
List of Papers
- Size-aware Sharding For Improving Tail Latencies in In-memory Key-value Stores
- Monoxide: Scale out Blockchains with Asynchronous Consensus Zones
- KerA: Scalable Data Ingestion for Stream Processing
- NetCache: Balancing Key-Value Stores with Fast In-Network Caching
- Atum: Scalable Group Communication Using Volatile Groups
- The Chubby lock service for loosely-coupled distributed systems
- Locking Made Easy
- FloDB: Unlocking Memory in Persistent Key-Value Stores
- SLAQ: Quality-Driven Scheduling for Distributed Machine Learning
- ZooKeeper: Wait-free coordination for Internet-scale systems
- Algorand: Scaling Byzantine Agreements for Cryptocurrencies
- Stadium: A Distributed Metadata-Private Messaging System
- Husky: Towards a More Efficient and Expressive Distributed Computing Framework
- StreamBox: Modern Stream Processing on a Multicore Machine
- SABER: Window-Based Hybrid Stream Processing for Heterogeneous Architectures
- SnappyData: A Unified Cluster for Streaming, Transactions, and Interactive Analytics
- CherryPick: Adaptively Unearthing the Best Cloud Configurations for Big Data Analytics
- Tachyon: Reliable, Memory Speed Storage for Cluster Computing Frameworks
- MacroBase: Prioritizing Attention in Fast Data
- Prism: Deconstructing the Blockchain to Approach Physical Limits
- The Data Station: Combining Data, Compute, and Market Forces
- Structured Cluster Execution for Data Streams
The exam itself will consist of two parts: a written exam, and an oral presentation.
Written Exam: Mon October 19: 5pm – 7pm
In the written exam, you will have two hours to answer one or more questions regarding the paper you have read (see below) as well as topics covered during the course. The goal is to show you have understood the content of the paper and the main concepts of the course. You can use your notes, the slides, and the paper during the exam, but you won’t be allowed to use your laptops or other connected devices.
Oral Presentations: Wed October 21: 5pm –Â 7pm
The oral presentations will take place in room E210 in building 2B at 5pm on Wednesday October 21, 2020.
For fairness, we will determine the order of the presentation during the sessions. In addition, you are all required to attend all talks as you will be evaluated not only on your talk but also on the questions you ask during the others. You will have 15 minutes to present your slides, followed by 5 minutes of questions.
To ensure a smooth exam process, please send your slides to both of us no later than Tuesday October 20. To make sure we do not miss your email, please use the following subject line: BSI-SIF-2020-Exam.
Evaluation Criteria
Your presentation should demonstrate that you have understood the material presented in the course, as well as the paper you have been assigned. In particular, we expect you to be able to identify links between the paper and related topics presented during the course.
For the presentation, we will additionally evaluate the following criteria.
- the quality and clarity of your slides
- the quality and clarity of your presentation.
- your ability to respect the allotted time: not too long, not too short.
- your ability to answer questions properly
- the questions you will ask during other students’ presentations.
