6.824 - Spring 2020

6.824 Project

Proposals due: Mar 31 23:59
Code and write-up due: May 8 23:59
Presentations: May 12 in class

Introduction

You can either do a final project based on your own ideas, or Lab 4.

If you want to do a project, you must get our approval for your idea in advance. You must form a group of 2 or 3 6.824 students to collaborate on the project. At the end of the term you'll turn in your code and a short write-up describing the design and implementation of your project, and make a short in-class presentation about your work. We'll post the project write-ups and code on the course web site.

Your project should be something interesting and challenging that's closely related to 6.824 core topics, such as fault tolerance. The project must involve at least as much effort as Lab 4. Below you'll find some half-baked ideas that we think could turn into interesting projects, but we haven't given them too much thought.

Deliverables

There are four concrete steps to the final project, as follows:

  1. Form a group and decide on the project you would like to work on. Feel free to use Piazza to find group members and discuss ideas. Course staff will be happy to discuss project ideas via e-mail or in person.
  2. Flesh out the exact problem you will be addressing and how you will go about solving it. By the proposal deadline, you must submit a proposal (less than a page) describing: your group members list, the problem you want to address, how you plan to address it, and what are you proposing to specifically design and implement. Submit your proposal to https://6824.scripts.mit.edu/2020/handin.py/. We'll tell you whether we approve, or not, and give you feedback.
  3. Execute your project: design and build something neat!
  4. Write a document describing the design and implementation of your project, and turn it in along with your project's code by the final deadline. The document should be about 3 pages of text that helps us understand what problem you solved, and what your code does. You can either send the code to the staff list or provide a link to an repository (e.g., on GitHub) in your writeup. The code and writeups will be posted online after the end of the semester.
  5. Prepare a short in-class presentation about the work that you have done for your final project. We will provide a projector that you can use to demonstrate your project.

Half-baked project ideas

You should feel free to propose your own project idea. If you'd like some starting points, here are some topics that might (or might not) be worth thinking about.