CS703. General Research Areas in Advanced Operating Systems: Academic RP Topics

CS703 – Advanced Operating Systems

Operating Systems architecture and structures (pros, cons, enhancements, comparison to other architectures)

1. Exo-kernels   (Dawson Engler)
2. Micro-kernels
3. Distributed kernels
4. Middleware for massively distributed systems e.g. Grid computing infrastructures 

Virtual Machines and Virtual Machines Monitors (pros, cons, comparison of different VMM architectures, identification of performance bottlenecks and suggestions for their removal etc.)

1. VmWare
2. Zen
3. User mode Linux
4. Denali (Rice University)
5. Disco 

Threads Vs event-driven programming models

1. Threaded model problems, pros, cons from a software engineering and design standpoint
2. Event-driven and hybrid models (pros, cons, complexity, scalability etc.)
3. case studies 

File systems

1. Distributed file systems
2. Client server based networked file systems
3. Server-less peer to peer file systems
4. pros, cons, consistency, performance, scalability of different file systems
5. fault tolerance in distributed file systems 

Memory management

1. Efficient algorithms and heuristics for memory management
2. Comparison of different algorithms
3. User controlled OS memory management
4. Multiprocessor memory management and shared memory models
5. Support for super-pages in OS 

Scheduling

1. Evaluation of proportionate share scheduling ideas
2. Efficient scheduling on multi-processors
3. Application aware and application controlled scheduling in event-driven systems 

Mobility management

1. Disconnected operation in distributed file systems
2. Application mobility support in operating systems
3. Toolkits for mobile information access e.g. Rover 

Communication

1. Inter-process and Inter-machine communication architectures
2. Evaluation of peer to peer systems e.g. chord, Pastry, Gnu-tella, Kaza
3. Remote procedure call architectures and RPC based systems case studies 

Fault tolerance and recovery

1. Study of fault and failure models
2. Power of replication and state duplication
3. Caching and state duplication 

Security

1. Reasons for failure of crypto systems
2. Federated identity based systems
3. Comparison of.Net and Java security models
4. A critical study of Kerberos system
5. Denial of Service and Distributed Denial of Service
6. Case  studies of secure OS e.g. SE Linux
7. Case studies of security vulnerabilities in commercial operating systems

CS704 - Advanced Computer Architecture-II

Academic Research Paper Announcement Topics

 Here are some areas which you can explore:

1.     Impact of Nanotechnologies on the Architecture of Computer Systems

2.     Smartphones Processors’ Architecture

3.     Future Enhancements in Computer Memory Hierarchy

4.     Shared Virtual Memory Mechanism and the Underlying Techniques

5.     Virtual Memory and its Implementations

6.     Virtualization Technology with and without Hardware support

7.     Techniques for Improvement of Cache Utilization

8.     Memory Hierarchy and Cache Design

9.     Techniques for Pre-fetching Data

10. Instruction Level Parallelism

11. Multiprocessors Thread Scheduling

12. Cache Replacement Policies

13. Role of Visual Simulators in Teaching Computer Architecture and Organization

14. Any other research area relevant to the course.