ECE 577 - Spring 2009
Computer System and Network Evaluation

 

 Syllabus [click here]

 Time and Place

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30-10:45am, Psych. Bldg., Room 304

 Instructor

Dr. Marwan Krunz
ECE Building, Room 356H
Phone: (520) 621-8731
Email: (krunz@ece.arizona.edu)

 Office Hours

Tuesdays 11am-12pm, Thursdays 2-3pm, and by appointment.

 Class Material

There is no required textbook for this class. The material will be based on lecture notes and handouts, which will either be provided in class or made available through the Copy Center in Harvill Building.

 References:

 Prerequistes

ECE 503 or an equivalent course in probability theory and random processes (check with me if you are not sure of the suitability of your background).

 Homework Assignments and Solutions

[To be added later]

 Course Objectives

Computer systems play a vital role in our lives. The ability to predict the performance of these systems and optimally design their parameters is an area of significant interest to computer engineers and scientists. This course will provide the theoretical foundation for computer systems analysis and evaluation. With such foundation, students will learn how to model and evaluate memory systems, CPUs, network systems, switches, routers, etc. The underlying principles of computer systems analysis (which are based on stochastic theory, statistics, and queueing theory) will be studied. Several operational laws that are used in analyzing large computer systems will also be discussed.

 Topics (tentative):

The above topics will be discussed in the context of computer applications (network protocols, memory systems, capacity analysis, etc.). Examples of related applications will be presented throughout the course.

 Discrete-Event Simulation Using Csim

Although simulations is not the main focus of this course, in some homework assignments you will be asked to write simulation code and run experiments using the Csim package. The purpose of these simulations is to study the performance of certain complicated queueing systems that are hard to analyze or to validate analytical results by comparing them with simulations. I will spend 2-3 lectures reviewing Csim, but you may want to get a head-start by learning this package on your own before I cover it in class. The full documentation of Csim (including the User's
Guide
and Reference Manual) can be found online at Mesquite's website (check under 'Documentation').

 Grading: