EE386: Robust System Design

Stanford University, Spring Quarter 2007-2008

Professor Subhasish Mitra

Announcements
Course info
Contact
Current Course Calendar
Project/Seminar Guidelines

Announcements

· 5/29/2008

o There is no class next Tuesday. Instead, there is one on Wednesday June 4^th 5:30pm, in Gates 100.

o Please submit your final presentation ppt by June 4^th 5:30pm.

· 5/12/2008

o Project progress slides are due 11:59pm Sunday, May 25^th.

· 5/5/2008

o For the rest of the quarter, we will be asking you to submit 3 reviews in TOTAL. For each review assignment, choose from the 2~3 seminar topics listed next to each of the due dates shown below:

· due 5/12 5:30pm: Architectural-level techniques, circuit & logic -level techniques, system effects of errors

· due 5/19 5:30pm: Checkpointing & recovery, Application dependent techniques, Software techniques

· due 5/29 2:15pm : Failure prediction, post-silicon validation

· 4/23/2008

o All future supplementary classes will take place at Gates100.

· 4/21/2008

o Today’s class location & time: Gates100, 5:30pm

o All future supplementary classes are moved to Monday 5:30pm. Please check the course calendar for the updated schedule.

· 4/17/2008

o Seminar topics for each group is shown in the course calendar.

· 4/15/2008

o Next Monday’s class (4/21) will take place at 5:30pm in Gates 260. Free pizza will be available.

o Please sign up for the 1^st meeting on Thursday. A sign-up sheet will be available. 20 minutes slots are available on the following days:

1. 4/18(Fri), 2pm~4:30pm

2. 4/22(Tue), 1pm~2pm

· 4/10/2008

o Among the last eight topics listed on the course calendar, choose the ones you like and list them in the order of preference by 4/17. Email the list to the staff with the subject “ee386 seminar preference”.

o “Post-silicon validation” has been added to the seminar topics.

o The references to the 8 seminar topics are now on the course calendar. They should help you in finding out what each topic is about. Please come to the office hour if you are unsure about any topic.

o Review to [Heragu 96] is due before the class on 4/17/2008.

· 4/8/2008:

o Form groups until 4/10/2008: one group should have 3 people.

o Review to one of the papers ([1],[2],[3],[4]) due 4/10/2008.This is to be done INDIVIDUALLY.

o References to the 8 seminar topics will be available on 4/10/2008.

Course info

Lectures: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2:15-3:30 p.m. in GESB 134 (Green Earth Science Building)

Course description:

This is an advanced course that will cover unique challenges and opportunities in building robust systems. Major topics to be covered include: causes of system failures; state-of-the-art modeling and their limiations; techniques for building robust systems that either avoid or are resilient to such failures through built-in error detection, failure prediction, self-recovery, and self-repair. Robust system design is a new exciting area of research. EE386 will be a research-oriented course and will explore new research problems.

Prerequisites:

The students are expected to have necessary background in digital design (EE108A, 108B). Background in EE271 and EE282 is good but not absolutely necessary).

Textbook and course materials:

There is no textbook. Lecture notes and paper references used in the course will be available from the class web page.

Course requirements:

· Seminar: After the 1^st month of class, which consists mainly of traditional lecture, students (in groups of preferably 2) will be asked to select a topic from an upcoming lecture. The students are then expected to research the topic and to produce slides for leading class discussion on the selected topic.

· Final project: With consultation of the course staff, students (in groups of preferably 2) will design and implement a research project relevant to the robust systems design topics taught in class. The projects may be related to on-going robust systems research at Stanford or may be independently conceived but should be of appropriate scale and interest for the research nature of this course.

· Paper Review: Students, individually, are expected to submit a short review of assigned papers, identifying the following elements: strengths (1~3 sentences), weaknesses (1~3 sentences), possible improvements and/or whether there is any scope for future research (1~3 sentences). Reviews are due before each class and should be emailed to the staff with the subject “ee386 paper review”. Review should be included in the main body of the email, and not as an attachment. If there are multiple papers assigned for a day, choose only one of them to review.

Grading (tentative):

· Class participation: 10%

· Paper Review: 10%

· Seminar: 30%

· Project: 50%

top of EE386 page

Contact

Email address: Please use ee386-spr0708-staff at lists.stanford.edu for anything related to the course.

Instructor: Subhasish Mitra (subh at stanford dot edu)

Gates 333, (650) 724-1915.

Office hours: Tuesday & Thursday 1pm-2pm

Administrative assistant: Uma Mulukutla (uma at cs dot stanford dot edu)

Gates 303, (650) 725-3726, Fax (650) 725-6949

Teaching assistant: Sung-Boem Park (ee386-spr0708-staff at lists.stanford.edu)

Gates 239

Office hours: Wednesday 2pm-3pm,Thursday 4pm-5pm