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Architecture, Parallel Computing and systems

PhD qualifying examination

 

WARNING!!!
This page contains outdated information and is no longer maintained. Please visit the agora page titled Architecture, Parallel Computing And Systems Phd Qualifying Examination for the latest information


This area has four different tracks: architecture, compilers, parallel programming, and systems. Each track has a core and a specialization reading list.

Preparation for the exam

You are asked to:

  • Read the following literature: 1) the core and specialization list for your chosen track, and 2) the core list for two additional tracks.
  • Prepare a presentation of one paper (selected by area faculty) from the core or specialization list of your chosen track.

Papers selected for Fall 2011 qual presentations

Architecture track: Daniel Lenoski, James Laudon, Kourosh Gharachorloo, Wolf-Dietrich Weber, Anoop Gupta, John Hennessy, Mark Horowitz, and Monica Lam. "The Stanford DASH Multiprocessor," IEEE Computer, March 1992, pp. 63-79.

Compilers track: B. Steensgaard. "Points-to Analysis in Almost Linear Time," Proceedings of the 23th Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL'96), pages 32-41, ACM Press, January 1996.

Parallel Programming track: Cristian Coarfa, Yuri Dotsenko, John Mellor-Crummey, Francois Cantonnet, Tarek El-Ghazawi, Ashrujit Mohanty, Yiyi Yao and Daniel Chavarria-Miranda. An Evaluation of Global Address Space Languages: CoArray Fortran and Unified Parallel C. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPOPP). Chicago, IL, June 15-17, 2005.

Systems track: David A. Patterson, Garth Gibson, and Randy H. Katz. "Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)," Proceedings of the 1988 ACM SIGMOD Conference on Management of Data, Chicago IL, June 1988, pp. 109-116.

 

Exam process

The exam is oral and lasts 90 minutes. You will start by presenting the paper that was selected. The faculty on your committee will ask you about the whole reading list, not necessarily specifically about the paper you present.

Academic Office Contact: Mary Beth Kelley


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Urbana, IL 61801-2302. The Department is part of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Contact academic@cs.uiuc.edu with academic questions
or webmaster@cs.uiuc.edu with questions or comments on this page.