Reaction notes should should reflect your critical reading of the paper. Some questions to think about as you read: Did the authors do what they said they were going to do? What are the important ideas (just because an author says something is important doesn't mean it necessarily is)? Do their results make sense? Are their methods sound? Are there weaknesses in their solution? What assumptions are they making? How does their work fit in with other similar work? What improvements and/or extensions to the area do they contribute? Are there terms, ideas, techniques, that you don't understand?
some tips for reading research papers
Reaction notes should be no more than one page in length and structured in the following way:
You are welcome to discuss other parts of the paper in addition to answering the specific question. However, it is not required that you do so.
$ gv file.ps.gzgv cannot handle some version of postscript, in this case you should save a copy of the paper.ps.gz file, gunzip it, and then either view it using gs or convert it to pdf and view it using acroread:
$ gunzip file.ps.gz $ gs file.ps $ ps2pdf file.ps $ acroread file.pdfYou can print postscript using lpr, or print 2-up postscript files using mpage and lpr:
$ lpr file.ps $ mpage -2 -M-10 -dp file.ps | lprYou can print double sided to TheDicer:
$ lpr -PTheDicer file.ps $ mpage -2 -M-10 -dp file.ps | lpr -TheDicerYou can view (and print) pdf files using acroread:
$ acroread file.pdf
Reaction Notes Question: What is ment by data parllelism and task parallelism? What makes pthreads a task parallel programming model?
Reaction Notes Question: What are the target systems for MPI and OpenMP? How well does each fit for programming on a cluster of SMPs? Explain the strengths and weakness of each for such a system.
Do not do the Summary part of reaction notes for this paper. Instead answer the Reaction Notes Question and list any questions you have.
Reaction Notes Question: Pick one of scalability, transparency, or single-system image, and define what it is and why it is desirable in a distributed system, and discuss some of the issues associated with supporting it.
Reaction Notes Question: Discuss the scalability of the Map Reduce Implementation. How well is it designed to scale to large-sized systems and large-sized applications? Explain/support your answer.
Reaction Notes Question: What is ment by an endpoint? Is there any benefit to puting a function not at an endpoint (in a lower-level or intermediate point)? If yes, explain what is gained by doing so and if any guarantee about the functionality can be made by doing so. If no, explain why not. You may want to use an example to explain your answer.
Do not get too bogged down into the details of LFS, Zebra, cleaning, and RAID. Just try to get the general idea. Focus mainly on sections 3 and 5.
Reaction Notes Question: How is logging used in XFS? Pick one example and explain how and why it is used.
Reaction Notes Question: No reaction notes for this one.
Reaction Notes Question: In what ways did the intended use of the file system lead to its design? Pick one of these ways to discuss in more details (include explaination of why the resulting design choice fits its intended use, and critic the design choice in terms of how well it meets its goal (and explain why)).
Wednesday | Friday |
Janis and Ross | Jake |
Andrew and Ryan | Jon and Ben |
Geoff and Cyrus | Nick and Doug |
Alex and Maria | Greg and Yannick |
Colin |
Reaction Notes Question: Describe Lazy Consistency. What data consistency guarentees does it make? Evaluate Lazy Consistency for DSM systems (why? what are the trade-offs? explain.)
Wednesday | Friday |
Alex and Maria | Cyrus and Geoff |
Jake |
Monday | Wednesday | Friday |
Janis and Ross | Colin | Jon and Ben |
Andrew and Ryan | Yannick and Greg | Nick and Doug |