CS3331 Concurrent Computing
Course Information Page
Spring 2012

Course Instructor		Dr. C.-K. Shene
Office		Rekhi 305
Class Meeting		Monday, Wednesday and Friday 14:05 - 14:55
Classroom		Fisher 326
Office Hour		Monday and Wednesday 15:05 - 15:55
Phone		(906) 487-3392
e-mail		shene@mtu.edu

Click here to see the most recent announcements (April 20, 2012)
Click here to see the most recent ThreadMentor FAQ (October 1, 2006)
Click here for the most recent grade posting (April 29, 2012)

Some Important Advises

This course will use C and C++. We will discuss C++ to some degree barely enough for our purpose. Thus, you should get a good reference of C/C++ in hand.

Always start doing your programming assignment EARLY. Waiting until the last few hours is definitely not a wise move, because there could be too many people running their programs at the same time making system response time extremely slow. Moreover, machines may crash causing extra delay. Normally, I do not grant any extension if your home machine, your phone line or the department machines crash in the last minutes. Always start early.

Concurrent programming requires a careful planning, which may need a mindset that is different from that of sequential programming you learned in previous courses. When you receive a programming assignment, do not sit in front of a workstation and start typing your program immediately. This trial-and-error approach, in general, DOES NOT work and may require longer time to finish your assignment. The best way of doing concurrent programming assignments is to think carefully with a pencil and a piece of paper before touching a computer keyboard.

Since the behavior of a concurrent program is dynamic, which means it acts differently from time to time, you should try to reason about the correctness of your program. In general, just running for one or two test cases is not sufficient. Our grader will read your program to find possible errors. When writing sequential programs, the same bug appears at the same place every time you run the same program. However, bugs of a concurrent program (e.g., race conditions and deadlocks) may not appear every time. As a result, you may have an incorrect program even though you may have had hundreds correct test runs.

Due to security reasons, starting with Fall of 2008, you will not receive submission confirmation e-mails. As a result, you should use the interactive version of submit and ensure all required files are submitted properly. If you choose to use the command line version of submit, you should use the recover command to verify your submission.
After submitting your assignment, DO NOT modify your files so that the system administrator can retrieve your files in case your submission did not go through successfully.

Always read the assigned materials listed in the weekly reading lists and do the problems. Weekly reading lists are available near the bottom of this page.

Course Objectives

This course will discuss concepts and techniques in concurrent computing. Major topics include: processes and threads, mutual exclusion, semaphores, monitors and condition synchronization, deadlock, safety and liveness, message passing, and concurrent architectures. Course prerequisite are CS 1141 and CS2311 and CS2321.

Textbook

There is no suitable textbook for this course. All slides used in class and supporting materials are available in the common directory: /classes/cs3331.ck/common. Slides are also available here, if you prefer web acess; however, software tools and programs are only available in the common directory. Check this directory frequently for new slides and other available stuffs.

Other Useful Materials

Make your program
Multithreaded Programming with ThreadMentor
Solaris multithreaded programming
Unix Multiprocess Programming
Signals
Non-Local GOTO: setjmp() and longjmp()

Meeting Time and Office Hours

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
13:05 - 13:55		Dept. Meeting
14:05-14:55	CS3331 Fisher 326		CS3331 Fisher 326		CS3331 Fisher 326
15:05-15:55	Office Hour Rekhi 305		Office Hour Rekhi 305		Department Seminar
16:05-17:20	CS5611 Rekhi 101		CS5611 Rekhi 101

After class and e-mail discussions are welcome

Course Syllabus

No. of Weeks	Course Topics
1	Basics
1	Hardware and OS Stuffs
3	Process and Threads
1	Critical Sections and Mutual Exclusion
5	Synchronization	Mutex Locks
		Semaphores
		Monitors
		Message Passing
		Race Conditions and Livelock/Deadlock
2	Programming Language and System Supports
1	Other Topics

Important Dates

The following is a list of important dates. The exam dates are fixed and will not change; however, programming assignment due dates may be modified based on the course pace. Changes will be announced in class and on the info page.

Week 4	February 3	Friday	11pm	Program 1 due
Week 6	February 17	Friday	in class	Exam 1 (50 min)
Week 7	February 24	Friday	11pm	Program 2 due
Week 9	March 16	Friday	11pm	Program 3 due
Week 10	March 23	Friday	in class	Exam 2 (50 min)
Week 11	March 30	Friday	11pm	Program 4 due
Week 13	April 13	Friday	11pm	Program 5 due
Week 14	April 20	Friday	11pm	Program 6 due
Final Week	April 23	Monday	3-5pm	Final (2 hours) Fisher 326

Weights Assigned to Programs

We will have maximum six programming assignments.

*Program 1*	*Program 2*	*Program 3*	*Program 4*	*Program 5*	*Program 6*
50	100	50	100	100	70

Weights Assigned to Exams

*Exam 1*	*Exam 2*	*Final*
100	100	200

Note that quizzes are not listed above. Quizzes will take place when I see they are needed. Quizzes are always short exams testing if you have acquired the most basic knowledge of each topic. As a result, they usually take place about one week after a major topic is completely discussed. However, it does not mean every topic will have a quiz.

Grading

The theory part has two midterm exams and some quizzes. The sum of the scores you will obtain has a 50% weight. The programming part has five to six assignments, depending on our progress. The sum of the scores you will obtain constitutes the other 50%. Grading will be based approximately on the scale shown in the table below.

Grade	A	AB	B	BC	C	CD	D	F
Scale	90-100%	85-89%	80-84%	75-79%	70-74%	65-69%	60-64%	0-59%

In addition, you will not receive a passing grade in the course unless you receive a passing grade on the exams alone (i.e., 60% or 300 points). Likewise, you will not receive a passing grade in the course unless you receive a passing grade on the programming assignments alone (i.e., 60% or 258 points).

Late Policy

No late programming assignments will be graded, except that you have a valid excuse.

Collaboration and Cheating

No assignment-specific assistance should be given nor received on any programming assignment. Any outside help concerning the use of the computer facilities is acceptable. You may discuss the meaning or intent of an assignment, but not ways to program it. All work turned in must be completely your own. You must not share code or even outlines! Any and all use of programs from other texts or references must be explicitly stated as part of program documentation. In general, any acts of plagiarism will result in a failing grade for the course along with the submission of a report to the Dean of Students. See the hand-out on Computer Science Policy on Cheating and Academic Integrity Policy for more details.

Exams and Final

You are responsible for avoiding exam time conflicts!!

ADA

``MTU complies with all federal and state laws and regulations regarding discrimination, including the Americans with Disability Act of 1990 (ADA). If you have a disability and need a reasonable accommodation for equal access to education or services at MTU, please call Dr. Gloria Melton, Dean of Students, (2212). For other concerns about discrimination, you may contact your advisor, department head, or the Affirmative Action Office (3310).''

The following two web sites may provide you with more information: