Datacenter Networks & Systems

CS 8803, Georgia Tech, Spring 2026

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Topic Milestones Reading Material
13-Jan Introduction Datacenter as a computer, Berkeley View on Cloud
15-Jan Introduction
20-Jan Data Center Workloads Workload Diversity, Resource Central, Alibaba Mixtures
22-Jan Data Center Workloads Google Traces, Serverless MS, Alibaba Microservices, Google RPCs
27-Jan Server Hardware: Disaggregation Disaggregation Networking, ReFlex, AIFM, Pond
29-Jan Server Hardware: Acceleration and Virtualization Project Proposal TPU, VCU, Azure SmartNIC, Virt. Book (Chapter 4-6)
3-Feb Server Software: Low-latency OS Kernel vs User DemiKernel, SNAP, ghOSt
5-Feb Server Software: Cloud OS LegoOS Firecracker, Containers
10-Feb Server Algorithms Quiz 1 (in-class) Efficient Policies, Breakwater, Host Congestion
12-Feb Network Hardware: NICS RDMA Design Guidelines, iPipe
17-Feb Network Hardware: Switches
19-Feb Network Hardware: Topology FatTree, FatClique, Jupiter
24-Feb Network Hardware: Topology HW 1 (released) Jupiter++, Lightwave, Aquila
26-Feb Project Proposal Presentations Project Proposal Presentations
3-Mar Project Proposal Presentations
5-Mar Network Software: Host Stacks PISCES, Andromeda
10-Mar Network Software: Programmable Switches HW 1 (deadline) P4, RMT, ATP
12-Mar Network Software: SDN OpenFlow, Orion, CAPA
17-Mar Network Algorithms: Congestion Control DCTCP, Swift, HPCC NDP, Homa, SRD
19-Mar Network Algorithms: Resource Scheduling Quiz 2 (in-class) FairCloud, Coflows, FastPass, pFabric, NUMFabric
24-Mar Spring Break
26-Mar Spring Break
31-Mar Cluster Hardware: Power and Cooling HW 2 (released) Datacenter as a computer
2-Apr Cluster Software: OS Project Progress Report Borg, Twine, MESOS, Protean
7-Apr Cluster Software: Cluster-scale Applications Spark, Ray
9-Apr Cluster Software: Cluster-scale Applications
14-Apr Cluster Algorithms: Scheduling Tetris, Themis, DRF, Decima
16-Apr Cluster Algorithms: Scheduling HW 2 (deadline) Dynamo, SmoothOperator, Prediction for power
21-Apr Project Presentations Project Presentations
23-Apr Project Presentations
28-Apr Final Exam (in-class) Project Final Report