Obligatory exercise: Video-blog your topic of choice!

As discussed in the first lecture of our course, we will have one obligatory exercise in January that you need to submit as a prerequisite for admission to the exam.

In the lecture, we are covering several fundamental topics in concurrent programming. For this exercise, you will study one of these topics in more depth and present it in form of a short video.

Organization

  • Please send by January 08, 2020 an email with your team information and topic selection to . Also, do not hesitate to contact us in case of questions or doubts.
  • Deadline (fix, no extension): January 31, 2020
  • You can work together in teams of 1-2 students on a topic; every student in a team needs to submit his/her own video.
  • You do not need to appear in person in the video; voice recordings might be helpful, though.
  • The video should have a duration of 5-10 mins.
  • To submit your video, we will provide a server (more information will be announced in January)
  • For the recording of the video, you may use your own devices (mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc.). We are also able to provide a webcam with builtin microphone, video recorder and (limited) access to a Microsoft Surface which allows to make / record hand-written notes. (It is the one that I use in the lecture). Please get in contact if you want to get access to this or other hardware.
  • Before starting the recording, plan the content carefully (e.g. prepare a story board, slides, animations). From our experience, it is helpful and time-saving to write out the text explicitly. Don’t forget introduction and summary/conclusion to frame your contribution!
  • We will make the videos available to the other students in the course such that they can be used for exam preparation, but not for a broader audience. You may of course publish it on Youtube or other platforms if you want to (but please check for consent of your team members!).

Grading criteria

  • The presented content must be correct with regards to content. You may consult with us if you have questions or require clarification.
  • You may not reuse the lecture slides.
  • You are free to choose the way you present your topic in the video.
  • Don’t strive for perfection. Keep in mind that video bloggers often have professional setups and a team of technical support at their back. It is not our goal to achieve this technical level of video quality!
  • Be creative - and have fun!

Selection of Topics

  • Construction of Bounded Timestamps (Herlihy/Shavit, Sec. 2.7)
  • Lower Bound result by Burns and Lynch from Lecture 02, p. 44 ff (paper)
  • Black-White Bakery Algorithm with registers of bounded size (Taubenfeld, Sec. 2.4.3, paper)
  • Theorem on Composibility of Linearization, Lecture 03, p. 64 ff
  • Theorem on Non-Blocking of Linearization, Lecture 03, p.62 ff
  • Construction of Atomic Snapshots, Lecture 04, p.37 ff
  • Impossibility of Consensus with arbitrary Process Fault (FLP Theorem)
  • Exercise 02, Question 5
  • Exercise 02, Question 6
  • Exercise 02, Question 7
  • (Dynamic) Visualization of Weak Memory Models for TSO and PSO (Lecture 05)
  • Exercise 03, Question 1
  • Consensus number for Atomic Registers, FIFO Queue, etc. (Lecture 06 in first week of January, Herlihy/Shavit, Sec 5.2 + 5.3 + …)
  • Universality of Consensus (Lecture 07 in second week of January, Herlihy/Shavit, Sec. 6)

The topics are not restricted to this list. If you want to choose another topics, please get in contact with us to discuss your choice.