Homework One

Guidelines:

This assignment is to be done on your own. You may use materials from the texts and outside readings, but you may not work with other students in the class.

What you turn in:

1. Hand in a printed copy of your writeup(s), due at the start of class on the day that it is due.

Papers:

• A Case for NOW (Networks of Workstations) , by Thomas E. Anderson, David E. Culler, David A. Patterson, and the NOW Team, IEEE Micro, Feb, 1995.
• Parallel Supercomputing with Commodity Components , by Michael S. Warren, Donald J. Becker, M. Patrick Goda, John K. Salmon, and Thomas Sterling, PDPTA97

Assignment:

For students enrolled in CSCE4253, select one of the two papers listed above. For the paper that you select, write a one page summary of the article. Use single spacing and 12 point font. Your summary must not exceed one single-spaced page or I will not grade it. The summary does not need to be long, but be sure that you address the following points:

• At the top of the writeup give your name, followed by the complete citation of the paper.
• Summarize the relevant research contributions described in this paper. That is, briefly describe the problem(s) that the researchers worked on and how they were solved, or other observations or contributions made by the paper.
• How significant is each contribution? You may want to classify the contribution as minimal, medium (it had some impact to the research community and others used the results), or high (it opened a new research area, or changed research directions by a large group of researchers). You should justify your classification.
• What research issues were not addressed? That is, did they completely solve the problem, or are there still some open issues not answered in the paper?
• Was the paper well-written and complete, as far as you could tell?

For students enrolled in CSCE590, write a summary on both of the papers listed above.

Grading:

This assignment is worth 20 points per writeup, divided approximately equally among the following items:

• Does the writeup describe the key ideas and contributions of the paper?
• For each contribution, do you describe the problem and solution clearly, and justify your classification of it?
• Do you identify the open issues not addressed by the paper?
• Is the writeup free of spelling and grammatical errors, and overall does it read well?

Enjoy!