Assignment 3

COSC2626

2024 S1

Criteria                   Ratings                    Pts

Q1

(4 marks) In a multicore system with multiple hardware threads, is it useful if the OS is aware of the hardware threads? Explain how this helps improve system performance.         6 pts

Q2

(6 marks) Multiprocessors may use a shared queue or private queues (one for each of the processors). Discuss the advantage and disadvantage of using a shared ready queue and private queues.       6 pts

Q3

(6 marks) Briefly explain how sum reduction works. In addition to the difference on communication methods (shared memory vs message passing), what is the key difference between shared memory and message passing multiprocessors performing sum reduction?    6 pts

Q4

COSC2626 only. (12 marks) CPU, GPU and DPU are commonly used in the cloud for a variety of tasks. Discuss the kind of tasks that best suits each of the processors and what parallel processing architectures these processors use.     12 pts

COSC2640 only. (12 marks) You are designing a program and want to take advantage of parallel processing. Discuss your design considerations and the types of processors to run the program.

Q5

(6 marks) Briefly describe how the Internet is structured, listing the key devices.    6 pts

Q6

(6 marks) Discuss what makes a Tier-1 ISP and how ISP and CSP networks are connected. What is the financial implication?     6 pts

Q7

(8 marks) From network topology point of view, discuss and explain the similarity and the difference between institutional networks and data centre networks.     8 pts

Q8

COSC2626 only. (6 marks) A data centre may provide many different applications and services at the same time, such as search engine, web hosting, email, video streaming, etc. As a result, it has to handle a tremendous number of requests for these different applications. Describe how the requests are distributed and handled.

COSC2640 only. (6 marks) A data centre may provide many different applications and services at the same time, such as search engine, web hosting, email, video streaming, etc. Discuss if it is a good idea to expose the servers to the clients, that is, allowing clients to contact these servers directly. Explain your choice.     6 pts

Q9

(6 marks) You are tasked to design the tools for live VM migration within a data centre. Discuss and compare the data transfer protocols that you may use.     6 pts

Q10

(6 marks) In video streaming over HTTP such as YouTube, there is a large variation in the amount of bandwidth available to a client, across different clients or over time for the same client. Is this an issue? Explain how a streaming protocol would handle this issue.     6 pts

Q11

(6 marks) Suppose you are visiting a news website. The news agency has its video content hosted in a third-party data centre, say, AWS. While reading a piece of news, you clicked a video link. Describe the procedure how the video clip was retrieved.      6 pts

Q12

COSC2626 only. (6 marks) When a client sends a request to a CDN, the CDN needs to determine which server will provide the requested content. Discuss how the server may be determined as well as the corresponding issues.

COSC2640 only. (6 marks) A CDN hosts both static and dynamic content. Some is of local significance while some is of global significance. Discuss where the different types of content are stored as well as server capacity implication.        6 pts

Total points: 80