Selected project reports, Spring 2005 : advanced OS & distributed systems (15-712)

Abstract: "This technical report contains six final project reports contributed by participants in CMU's Spring 2005 Advanced Operating Systems and Distributed Systems course (15-712) offered by professor Garth Gibson. This course examines the design and analysis of various aspects of operating systems and distributed systems through a series of background lectures, paper readings, and group projects. Projects were done in groups of two or three, required some kind of implementation and evalution [sic] pertaining to the classrom [sic] material, but with the topic of these projects left up to each group. Final reports were held to the standard of a systems conference paper submission; a standard well met by the majority of completed projects. Some of the projects will be extended for future submissions to major system conferences. The reports that follow cover a broad range of topics. These reports present a characterization of synchronization behavior and overhead in commercial databases, and a hardware-based lock predictor based on the characterization; design and implementation of a partitioned protocol offload architecture that provides Direct Data Placement (DDP) functionality and better utilizes both the network interface and the host CPU; design and implementation of file indexing inside file systems for fast content searching support; comparison-based server verification techniques for stateful and semi-deterministic protocols such as NFSv4; data-plane protection techniques for link-state routing protocols such as OSPF, which is resilient to the existence of compromised routers; and performance comparison of in-band and out-of-band data access strategies in file systems. While not all of these reports report definitely and positively, all are worth reading because they involve novelty in the systems explored and bring forth interesting research questions."