Notices

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: 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: 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:

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.

  1. 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.
  2. Study the old exams. They are posted on the exam page
  3. Study the assignment solutions. They are posted on the assignments page.
  4. Budget 4 hours per week EVERY WEEK to study for this class.
  5. 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:

January 10, 2005 - Welcome to a new year and a new semester!

Last update on April 21, 2005