OLD EECS site

This site is now obslete. See the ECE and CSE department pages.

Upcoming Events

Undergraduate

Graduate

Research

People

Facilities

Software

Miscellaneous

You should visit the new ECE or CSE department's web pages.

EECS | Graduate | Computer Science Qualifiers PAGEamp Comprehensives

CS Graduate Program Core Requirements
and
Computer Science Qualifiers

Page Topics:


Preface:

The fundamental concepts of a qualifier is as a test of the student's ability to reason in a limited area of research; comprehensives are to ensure the students have a suitable breadth of knowledge. The qualifier should be taken as soon as possible while the comprehensives should be completed before a student graduates.

Qualifiers General Information:

Any group of 3 faculty may propose a "qualifier" area. To do so they must provide, by the end of the fall term, a reading list that defined at most 300 pages of material for which the student is responsible. The faculty may also provide a few "questions" to help the students focus while reading the material. The associated faculty then make up and administer the qualifier.

The qualifiers will be offered in mid/late January. If a student does not pass the initial attempt, a second attempt may be made at a time mutually agreeable to the examination committee and the student. (It is expected to be within a few weeks). In all cases the qualifier must be completed before the end of the spring term. (The additional time is intended to allow students who had an off day to recover.) The same timing requirements apply to part-time Ph.D.'s as well.

The CS qualifiers will be oral, though the student or faculty involved may petition for a written exam. (Departmental petition, not a University Petition)

Any student planning on being a Ph.D. candidate must take the qualifier. M.S. candidates who wish may formally petition for admissions to the Ph.D. program. If accepted they must take the qualifiers in the spring following the acceptance of their petition. (This requires a departmental petition, not a University Petition.)

Students that have passed the qualifier in one area are permitted, if they can find a willing advisor, to do research in a different area. As always advisors may set preconditions to taking on a student; thus advisors may require students to take the qualifier in their research area before they are willing to advise that student.

Comprehensives (general information)

Comprehensives are to ensure a breadth of knowledge. The student must satisfy the comprehensive requirement BEFORE they may apply to defend a thesis. They are encouraged to complete them within the first 3 years. It expected that a well prepared CS student will finish them in their first year.

CS Graduate "comprehensives":

The Ph.D. Program "comprehensives" and the MS program Core requirement have been unified to be the same rules. (This replaces the old "three core course" in the MS program.)

To satisfy the comprehensives/core, you need to complete at least 2 courses in each of the following areas, and at least one 400 level course in 3 of the four areas. While some courses are listed in multiple categories they can be used in only one. Each category also allows for appropriate CSC350, CSC450 and CSC49X courses (as approved by the CS division or the graduate committee):

  • Systems:
    • Computer Architecture (ece201)*,
    • Operating Systems (csc303)*,
    • Advanced Architecture (ece401),
    • Advanced OS (csc403),
    • Computer Networks (ece404)
  • Compilers/Languages/Software Systems:
    • Compilers (csc302),
    • Advanced Compiling (Csc422)
    • Advanced programming (csc411),
    • Object oriented Software Engineering (csc432)
    • Object Oriented languages (csc412),
  • Theory:
    • Automata Theory (csc318)
    • Advanced Automata Theory (csc409),
    • Algorithms (csc340),
    • Parallel Algorithms (csc376)
    • Programming Semantics(Csc437),
    • Graph Theory (csc440)
  • Computer Applications:
    • Advanced Database (e.g. csc415,csc417),
    • Artificial Intelligence I(e.g. csc327,CSC368),
    • Expert Systems (e.g. Csc414,Csc416)
    • Computer Vision (e.g. ece375),
    • Graphics (e.g. csc313),
    • MultiMedia
    • Parallel Algorithms (e.g. csc376),
    • Computer Networks (e.g. ece404)
Satisfying the "comprehensives" replaced the old "three core course" in the MS program. Courses from other universities or undergraduate studies may be used to satisfy these requirements, by petition, at the discretion of the division faculty.

The courses marked with a * are required for admission into the MS program and will generally not be allowed to count in the 30 credits of the MS program.

CS Graduate qualifier, 2000

The CS qualifiers will be offered towards the end of January 2000 or early Feburary, with the dates to be announced around Jan 15, 2000. The topics being offered in 2000:

CS Graduate students who have not taken the qualifiers, have been here at least one semester and are thinking of being in the PhD program should sign up. A

A sign up sheet will be available in PL 304 in January.

Questions concerning preparation can be addressed to the area faculty listed with each topic. Pay attention to the last update date as the lists from last year will may be changing in Dec 2000.

Software Architecture Qualifier: (Contact Prof. Christine Hofmeister)

(updated 12/18/2000)

Background Reading:

Hofmeister, C., R. Nord, and D. Soni. Applied Software Architecture. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 2000.

Read pages 1-190.

Technical Papers:

  1. Perry, D. E., and A.L. Wolf. "Foundations for the Study of Software Architecture." ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes = 1992; 17(4): 40-52.
  2. Allen, R.J., and D. Garlan."Formalizing Architectural Connection." Proceedings of the 16th = International Conference on Software Engineering.IEEE Computer Society Press, 1994, 71-80.
  3. Shaw, M., R. DeLine, D. Klein, T. Ross, D. Young, and G. Zelesnik."Abstractions for Software = Architecture and Tools to Support Them." IEEE Transactions on Software = Engineering 1995; 21(4): 314-335.
  4. Garlan, D., R. Allen, J. Ockerbloom. "Architectural Mismatch: Why Reuse = Is So Hard." IEEE Software 1995; 12(6): 17-26.
  5. Kruchten, P. "The 4+1 View Model of Architecture." IEEE Software = 1995; 12(6): 42-50.
  6. Selic. B. "Turning Clockwise: Using UML in the Real-time Domain." Communications of the = ACM 1999; 42(10): 46-54.
  7. Medvidovic, N., and R.N. Taylor."A Classification and Comparison Framework for Software Architecture Description Languages."IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 2000; 26(1): 70-93.
  8. Bachman, F., L. Bass, C. Buhman, S. Comella-Dorda, F. Long, J. Robert, R. = Seacord, K. Wallnau. "Volume II: Technical Concepts of Component-Based = Software Engineering."Technical Report CMU/SEI-2000-TR-008.

Computer Architecture Qualifier: (Contact Prof. Mike Schulte)

(updated 12/20/00, but same as 1999)

Topics covered in this exam performance evaluation, instruction set architectures, memory hierarchies, pipelined processors, instruction level parallelism, input/output systems, interconnection networks, parallel processors, and computer arithmetic.

Architecture Background Reading:

These references are from J. L. Hennessy and D. A. Patterson, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (2nd edition), Morgan Kaufman Publishers, Inc, 1996. 

1. Computer Performance:		pp. 18-38
2. Instruction Set Architecture:	pp. 69-89
3. Pipelining:				pp. 139-178
4. Instruction Level Parallelism:	pp. 240-288
5. Memory Hierarchies:			pp. 373-447
6. Storage Systems:			pp. 485-521
7. Interconnection Networks: 		pp. 579-597
8. Multiprocessors:			pp. 635-647
9. Arithmetic:				pp. A38-A60
Journal and Conference Papers:

  1. S. A. Mahkle, R. E. Hank, J. E. McCormick, D. I. August, and W. W. Hwu, "A Comparison of Full and Partial Predicated Execution Support for ILP Processors," Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Symposium on Computer Architecture, pp. 138-150, June 1995.
  2. J. E. Smith, "A Study of Branch Prediction Strategies", Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Symposium on Computer Architecture, pp. 135-148, May 1981.
  3. J.-K. Peir, W.W. Hsu, and A.J. Smith , "Functional Implementation Techniques for CPU Cache Memories," IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 100-110, February 1999.
  4. S. Palacharla, N. P. Jouppi, and J. E. Smith, "Complexity-Effective Superscalar Processors," Proceedings of the 24th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture, pp. 206-18, June 1997.
  5. D. M. Tullsen, S. J. Eggers, J. S. Emer, H. M. Levy, J. L. Lo, and R. L. Stamm, "Exploiting Choice: Instruction Fetch and Issue on an Implementable Simultaneously Multithreading Processor, Proceedings of the 23rd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture, pp. 191-202, May 1996.
  6. W.-H. Wang, J.-L. Baer, and H. M. Levy, "Organization and Performance of a Two-Level Virtual-Real Cache Hierarchy", Proceedings of the 16th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture, pp. 140-148, June 1989.
  7. D. A. Patterson, G. Gibson, and R. H. Katz, "A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)," Sigmod Record (ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data), vol.17, no.3, pp. 109-116, Sept. 1988.
  8. L. M. Ni and P. K. McKinley, "A Survey of Wormhole Routing Techniques in Direct Networks," IEEE Computer, Vol 26, No. 2, pp. 62-73, February 1999.
  9. J. P. Hayes and T. Mudge, "Hypercube Supercomputers," Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 77, no. 12, pp. 1829-1841, December, 1989.
  10. M. D. Ercegovac MD, T. Lang, and P. Montuschi. "Very-high Radix Division with Prescaling and Selection by Rounding. IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol.43, no.8, pp. 909-918, August 1994.

Computer Graphics and Human Computer Interaction: (Contact Professor Drew Kessler.)

(updated 12/22/00)

Textbook reading:

  1. Foley, J., van Dam, A., Feiner, S. and Hughes, J., Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice, Second Edition in C, Addison-Wesley, 1996. Ch. 5, 7, 16.1-16.3
  2. Watt, A. and Watt, M., Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques: Theory and Practice, Addison-Wesley, 1992. Ch. 4.1-4.7, Ch. 6
Papers:
  1. Regan, M. and Pose, R., "Priority Rendering with a Virtual Reality Address Recalculation Pipeline," Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH '94, Orlando, FL, July, 1994, pp. 155-162.
  2. Elliot, C., Schechter, G., Yeung, R., and Abi-Ezzi, S., "TBAG: A High Level Framework for Interactive, Animated 3D Graphics Applications," Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH '94, Orlando, FL, July, 1994, pp. 421-434.
  3. Rohlf, J. and Helman, J., "IRIS Performer: A High Performance Multiprocessing Toolkit for Real-Time 3D Graphics," Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH '94, Orlando, FL, July, 1994, pp. 381-394.
  4. D. Brookshire Conner, Scott S. Snibbe, Kenneth P. Herndon, Daniel C. Robbins, Robert C. Zeleznik, and Andries van Dam, "Three-Dimensional Widgets," Proceedings of the 1992 ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, Cambridge, MA, Mar. 1992, pp. 183-188.
  5. Paul S. Strauss, "IRIS Inventor, a 3D Graphics Toolkit," OOPSLA '93 Conference Proceedings, 28 (10), Oct., 1993, pp. 192-200.
  6. Foley, J. D., Wallace, V. L., and Chan, P., "The Human Factors of Computer Graphics Interaction Techniques," IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Nov. 1984, pp. 13-48.
  7. Zeleznik, R. C., Herndon, K. P., and Hughes, J. F., "SKETCH: An Interface for Sketching 3D Scenes," Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH '96, New Orleans, LA, Aug., 1996, pp. 163-170.
  8. Jacob, R. J. K., Deligiannidis, L., and Morrison, S., "A Software Model and Specification Language for Non-WIMP User Interfaces", ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 6 (1), Mar. 1999, pp. 1-46.
  9. Sun, C., Jia, X., Zhang, Y., Yang, Y, Chen, D., "Achieving Convergence, Causality-Preservation, and Intention-Preservation in Real-Time Cooperative Editing Systems," ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction , 5 (1), Mar., 1998, pp.63-108.

Computer Networks (Contact Professor Terry Boult.)

(updated 12/18/2000 (but the same as '99)

Textbook(Background): Computer Networks, 3rd Edition by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. Prentice Hall

  • Chapter 3 The Data Link Layer.
  • Chapter 4. The Medium Access Sublayer.
  • Chapter 5. The Network Layer.
  • Chapter 6. The Transport Layer.
Papers:
  1. D. Clark S. Shenker and L. Zhang: "Supporting Real-time Applications in an Intergrated Services Packet Network: Architecture and Mechanism" Proceedings ACM SIG COMM '92 (Aug 1992) P 14-26;
  2. L. Fan, P. Cao, J. Almeida and A. Broder: "Summary Cache: A Scalable Wide-Area Web Cache Sharing Protocol" Proceedings ACM SIG COMM '98 (Aug 1998) (see http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/sigcomm98/tp/technical.html)
  3. X. Iao and L. Ni ""Internet QoS: A Big Picture" IEEE Networks, Mar/April, 1999.
  4. F. T. Leighton, B. M. Maggs, A. G. Ranade, and S. B. Rao. Randomized routing and sorting on fixed-connection networks. Journal of Algorithms, 17(1):157-205, July 1994.
  5. B. N. Levine and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, "A Comparison of Reliable Multicast Protocols", "Multimedia Systems Journal (ACM/Springer)", Vol 6, No 5, Aug. 1998.
  6. C. Perkins, "Mobile IP," IEEE Comm., Vol. 35, No. 5, 1997, pp. 84
  7. I. Stoica, S. Shenker, and H. Zhang" Core-Stateless Fair Queueing: A Scalable Architecture to Approximate Fair Bandwidth Allocations in High Speed Networks. Proceedings ACM SIG COMM '98 (Aug 1998) (see http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/sigcomm98/tp/technical.html)
  8. C. Yang and A. Reddy "A taxonomy for Congestrin Control Algorithms in Packet Switching Networks", IEEE Netowrk, July/Aug. 1995
This site is no longer being updated but will remain for some time until we remove the old links within Lehigh. You should visit the new department's web pages at ECE or CSE .

The old EECS Department web site at Lehigh University /