Notices
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This page contains miscellaneous notices for
Simulation.
April 21, 2005 - The comprehensive final exam will be on Wednesday,
May 4th from 10:30 to 12:30 in the classroom (PHY 13). The instructions that
will appear on the exam are:
Welcome to the comprehensive final exam in Computer Simulation. Read each
problem carefully. There are ten required problems (each worth 10 points) and
one extra credit problem worth 10 points. You may have a calculator and one
8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper with you. On this sheet you may have anything you
want (definitions, formulas, flow charts, etc.) in your handwriting on both
sides of the page. You may not have photocopies or printed text on your formula
sheet. Please answer each problem on a separate sheet of paper, unless
otherwise noted. This exam includes a copy of Figure 2.5 (page 56) and
Table 4.1 (page 98) from MacDougall.
April 7, 2005 - For your last assignment (combined assignment #6 and #7)
you need to complete a background review. What have other people done (in the
area of load balancing with stale state information)? Can you build on this
work? If you do not know what others have done you risk re-inventing the wheel.
This is never a good thing. I suggest starting with Mike Dahlin's IEEE
Transactions paper:
"Interpreting Stale Load Information," M. Dahlin, IEEE Transactions on
Parallel and Distributed Systems, 11 (10 ) Oct 2001.
Where to find this paper? The USF library has electronic subscriptions to all
IEEE conferences and journals (and to many, many non-IEEE conferences and
journals too). Scholar.google.com is a new google service that can help you
find many archival works. You can also (in the case of Dahlin's paper) go to
the home pages of the authors. Google.com is always a good place to start, but
you want to (as much as possible) always go for archival sources. Web pages of
companies "come and go". However, you will want to look at (and reference)
company web pages. Cisco has distributed load balancing products that use
state information. There is even an entire website devoted to load balancing
(http://www.loadbalancing.net). Be
careful not to get lost in the marketing speak (and in technical details
irrelevant for your modeling work). Finally, I advise everyone not to design a
method that is a "Rube Goldberg device". What is a Rube Goldberg device? Look
here. I hope that
you have fun with this last assignment and use it as a chance to
show-off what you have learned and what you can do!
March 16, 2005 - Exam #2 will be on March 30th. The instructions that
will appear on the exam are:
Welcome to exam #2 in Computer Simulation. Read each problem carefully. There
are eight required problems (each worth 12.5 points) and one extra credit
problem worth 10 points. You may have a calculator and one 8.5 x 11 inch sheet
of paper with you. On this sheet you may have anything you want (definitions,
formulas, flow charts, etc.) in your handwriting on both sides of the page. You
may not have photocopies or printed text on your formula sheet. Please answer
each problem on a separate sheet of paper, unless otherwise noted. This exam
includes a copy of page 56 from MacDougall and Section 24 (Statements, Reserved
Words) from the CSIM manual.
March 11, 2005 - Some example CSIM programs that I handed out in
the last class are: csim_ex3.c,
csim_ex4.c, and csim_ex5.c.
March 7, 2005 - I have tweaked the SMPL files a little to reduce "issues"
with gcc version 3.4.2 on Solaris. The tweaked SMPL is...
smpl_new.zip.
March 7, 2005 - FTP and telnet have been disabled on grad. You will need
secure (SSH) versions of these programs. You can get them from this link...
here.
March 7, 2005 - Some example CSIM programs from class today...
mm1_csim.c, csim_ex1.c,
and csim_ex2.c.
March 2, 2005 - On assignment #4 there
is a minor glitch in the first bulleted item in the situation section. This
bullet item should read, "... distributed hyperexponentially with standard
deviation 4 times greater than the mean." instead of "... distributed
hyperexponentially with variance 4 times greater than the mean." If you
have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them. I want EVERYONE to earn
a 100 on this assignment!
March 2, 2005 - The SMPL tandem queueing simulation model
discussed in class is here... tandem.c.
February 27, 2005 - The SMPL load balancing simulation model
discussed in class is here... balance1.c.
February 22, 2005 - I have discussed exam strategies with several
students in the class. Here is a summary of these discussion. Hints for
doing well in an exam.
- Prepare a "formula sheet" (8.5x11in sheet of paper, both sides, your
handwriting only) and review it with me at least 2 days before the exam. From
this review I can talk with you about areas you might have failed to study.
- Study the old exams. They are posted on the exam
page
- Study the assignment solutions. They are posted on the
assignments page.
- Budget 4 hours per week EVERY WEEK to study for this class.
- When taking the exam pace yourself (use a stop watch!) and never
leave a problem blank.
February 21, 2005 - It is essential that you have access to
a C compiler. I assume that all computer science and engineering students
do have development tools. A craftsman is no better than his or her tools.
Make sure that you tools are sharp! I assume that most of you have Microsoft
Visual Studio on your home PCs. Or, you have gcc if you are running Linux and
not Windows. Or, you have gcc (via cygwin)
on Windows. For an all-around easy to use command line compiler with very good
compile time messages and good execution performance, I recommend the free
Borland command line compiler. Look...
here
or see me. Yes, you can telnet to our Unix servers and edit/build/execute your
code remotely... but this is a very slow and cumbersome way to develop code.
You should use the many Ghz of local processor power that your PC (desktop
and/or laptop) has.
February 17, 2005 - SMPL is the next topic in class. You will need
the SMPL files... smpl_new.zip. Four example
SMPL programs (discussed in class) are smpl_ex1.c,
smpl_ex2.c, smpl_ex3.c, and
smpl_ex4.c.
February 14, 2005 - I have to appear at the Hillsborough County
School Board meeting tomorrow (02/15/05) at 5pm. This obviously overlaps
with my office hours. So, please see me earlier in the day OR if
you can only make it late in the day send me an email and I will come back
to the office after the school board meeting (probably around 7:00pm).
February 9, 2005 - The instructions, as they will appear on the
exam, for exam #1 are:
Welcome to exam #1 in Computer Simulation. Read each problem carefully.
There are eight required problems (each worth 12.5 points) and one
extra credit problem worth 10 points. Please write your answers in the
space provided. You may have a calculator and one 8.5 x 11 inch sheet
of paper with you. On this sheet you may have anything you want (definitions,
formulas, flow charts, etc.) in your handwriting on both sides of the page.
You may not have photocopies or printed text on your formula sheet. Please
answer each problem on a separate sheet of paper. Good luck!!!
January 10, 2005 - Welcome to a new year and a new semester!
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Last update on April 21, 2005
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