CSC 2227S: Topics in the Design and Implementation of Operating Systems

Paper Summary Guidelines

An important component of this course is critical reading of the assigned papers and coming to class ready to discuss them. To help you in this process, we require that you hand in a short review of each paper at the beginning of the class in which the papers will be discussed.

Your summaries should:

• State the 3 most important things the paper says. These could be some combination of their motivations, observations, interesting parts of the design, or clever parts of their implementation.
• Describe the paper's single most glaring deficiency. Every paper has some fault. Perhaps an experiment was poorly designed or the main idea had a narrow scope or applicability. Being able to assess weaknesses as well as strengths is an important skill for this course and beyond.
• Describe what conclusion you draw from the paper as to how to build systems in the future. Most of the assigned papers have been significant to the systems community and have had some lasting impact on the area.

We do not want a book report or a repeat of the paper's abstract. Rather, we want your considered opinions about the key points indicated above. Of course, if you have an insight that doesn't fit the above format, please include it as well.

We want the reviews to be short, between 1/4 and 1/2 a page. Reviews must be typed.

Reviews will be graded on a complete/incomplete basis. A very poor summary will be considered incomplete. Each summary is worth roughly 1%.

You do not have to prepare a written summary for a paper that you are presenting.

Paper summaries

Summaries will be posted here as they are submitted. The exact mechanism for submitting and posting is still to be determined. For the first week with summaries (i.e., Jan. 18), please submit printed copies of your summaries at the beginning of class.