CS 8804 RSA - Reliability and Security in Computer Architecture

Course Information

Time and Location	MWF 4-5pm in Howey (Physics) N210 A change in class time (due to conflict with other classes) and location will be discussed in the first lecture, and a change will be implemented if students in the class agree and a classroom is available
Professor	Milos Prvulovic milos at cc dot gatech dot edu
Office Hours	Klaus 3223 Time to be decided during first lecture(in discussion with students)
Textbook	No Required Textbook
Prerequisites	CS 6290 or equivalent. The prerequisite will not be enforced, but student taking CSA 8804 RSA without having taken CS 6290 will be expected to catch up with the 6290 material as needed. It will be possible to take CS 6290 and CS 8804 RSA concurrently - CS 8804 RSA material that relies on knowledge of CS 6290 material will be introduced after the prerequisite material has been taught in CS 6290.
Homework	Four homework assignments, to be done individually by each student. Each assignment consists of reading two papers and writing a report. The guidelines for reports and the specific questions to answer and issues to address in a report will be provided as each homework assignment is released.
Exams	One midterm and one final exam. One or both of the exams are gighly likely to be take-home exams. This will be decided (after discussion with students) in the first lecture.
Project	One project assignment, to be done in groups of up to two students. Students will form groups and propose project topics - some example topics will be provided by the professor, but students are free to propose other topics. These proposals will be refined in discussion with the professor (mostly to ensure that the proposed project is feasible to do in the time available) until final project assignments are made.

Final Grade Composition

Project	40%
Midterm Exam	15%
Final Exam	20%
Homework	20% (four homework assignments, equally weighted)
Class Participation	5% (not competitive, everyone can earn full credit through normal participation in in-class discussions)

Tentative Schedule

Week	Date	Topics	Notes
1	8/23	Introduction and Course Overview
	8/25	Reliability - Motivation and Definitions
	8/26	Fault Models, Classification, and Data
2	8/30	Faults, Errors, and Failures
	9/1	Redundancy, Voting, and Spares
	9/3	Reliability Model of Redundant Systems
3	9/6	Official School Holiday (Labor Day)
	9/8	Redundancy Example: Tandem
	9/10	Redundant Multi-Threading
4	9/13	DIVA
	9/15	Error Detection and Correction Codes	Project Group Proposals Due
	9/17	Parity, Checksums, ECCs and More
5	9/20	Examples - RAID and Self-Checking Logic
	9/22	Checkpointing and Recovery	HW1 Released
	9/24	Checkpoint Consistency
6	9/27	Roll-Back and Roll-Forward Recovery
	9/29	Examples - SafetyNet, ReVive, HARE	HW 1 Due
	10/1	Concept of Architectural Vulnerability
7	10/4	Architectural Vulnerability Analysis	Projects Assigned
	10/6	Architectural Vulnerability Analysis
	10/8	Midterm exam
8	10/11	Lifetime Reliability Concerns
	10/13	Security - Motivation and Definitions
	10/15	Attack Models, Classification, and Data	Last day to drop with "W" grade
9	10/18	Fall Recess
	10/20	Page-Based Protection and Protected-Mode Execution	HW2 Assigned
	10/22	x86 system and virtualization support
10	10/25	Code Integrity
	10/27	Dataflow Tracking	HW2 Due
	10/29	Anomaly Detection
11	11/1	Monitoring and Introspection
	11/3	Monitoring and Introspection Example: 3D Chips	HW3 Assigned
	11/5	Hardware-Supported Trusted Computing
12	11/8	HW-Supported Trust Examples: TMP, ARM TrustZone
	11/10	Hardware Attacks	HW3 Due
	11/12	Hardware Attack Defenses - XOM
13	11/15	Hardware Attack Defenses - Recent Work
	11/17	Covert Channels - Introduction	HW4 Assigned
	11/19	Covert Channels - Caches
14	11/22	Covert Channels - Emanations
	11/24	Covert Channels Example: Smart-Cards	HW4 Due
	11/26	Official School Holiday (Thanksgiving)
15	11/29	Denial of Service Attacks
	12/1	Denial of Service Attacks
	12/3	Lifetime Reduction Attacks
16	12/6	Lifetime Reliability and Attacks Example: PCM	Final Projects Due
	12/8	Project Demos/Presentations
	12/10	Project Demos/Presentations
	12/17	Final exam 11:30am-2:20pm ()	Probably a take-home exam