CMPT 756: Distributed & Cloud Systems

Mondays 12:30 - 1:20 pm & Thursdays 12:30 - 2:20 pm (Jan 5, 2026 - April 10, 2026)

Instructor: Ouldooz Baghban Karimi

Teaching Assistant: Ruming (Roy) Zhong, Ghazaleh Bakhtiariazad

Teaching Team Email: cmpt-756-teaching@sfu.ca

Course Components: Please refer to this page for details about course components.

Communications: The main communication platform for this course is Canvas. Please read this page for the details of communications required for the course including announcements, discussions, emails, etc.

Grading: Homework Assignments (20%) Quizzes (15%) Midterm Exam (25%) Final Project (40%)
Students must attain an overall passing grade on the weighted average of exams in the course in order to obtain a clear pass (C- or better). For more details, please check here.

Academic Honesty: Individual work expected (except for group project). Discussions and collaborations are encouraged. Internet solutions are not allowed. Well-referenced research allowed where explicitly indicated. Please refer to: www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student.html
This tutorial on Academic Integrity might also be helpful: https://canvas.sfu.ca/courses/56136

Office Hours

Ouldooz: Mondays 10-11am, TASC1 9411 (By Appointment)

Ghazaleh: Thursdays 11am-12pm, On Zoom (Drop-In)

Roy: Mondays 2-3pm, On Zoom (Drop-In)

For the By Appointment Office Hours, please book your appointments at least 24 hours before the session.

Booking an Office Hour Appointment: Please go to Canvas Calendar. [On the right-hand side] click on “Find Appointment”. A window with “Select Course” opens. Select “CMPT 756” and click submit. Book from the remaining times on the office hours on this calendar.

Schedule

Please check the following schedule every week for updated elements and required items of the week, and follow the slides, learning materials, practice questions, and optional readings through the canvas modules section.

**Tentative Schedule**
Date	Topic	Activity & Resource	Notes
01/05/2026	Course Information, Introduction	Welcome Session R: Module (0)	Start Module (0) Weekly recordings on discussion board post every Monday
Introduction
01/08/2026	Introduction to Distributed & Cloud Systems	Distributed & Cloud Systems	Start Module (1)
01/12/2026	Trends in Distributed & Cloud Systems	Serverless Cloud, AI/ML Operation
Fundamentals of Distributed Systems & The Cloud: Network, Compute, Store
01/12/2026	Network: Data Center Networks (DCN), Valiant Load Balancing	DCN design choices, VL2	Start Module (2) Cloud Platform Registration Available.
01/15/2026	Network: VL2, Jupiter	Jupiter Rising, Jupiter Evolving
01/19/2026 10:30-11:20am	Cloud Network Resources	AL: Uneven Application Fit	HW(1) Available
01/22/2026	Compute: Resources & Distributed Execution	Serial & Parallel Processing	Project Teams Available
01/26/2026	Compute: Distributed Algorithms	Quiz (1)
01/27/2026	Data & Learning Store: Distributed Storage	AL: Network, Compute, Store Storage Types, Consistency	Cloud Platform Registration Due
01/29/2026	Distributed Storage: Tradeoffs	Google File System (GFS)
02/02/2026	Distributed Storage	AL: Distributed File System
02/05/2026	Distributed Databases	Design of Example Cloud Services: Aurora, Anna, DynamoDB	Homework (1) Due Homework (2) Available
Keep Working: Fault Tolerance, Coordination, and Consensus
02/09/2026	Fault Tolerance	Fault Types Quiz (2)	Start Module (3) Project titles available
02/12/2026	Fault Tolerance	Resiliency, Recovery
02/23/2026	Coordination and Consensus		Homework (2) Due Homework (3) Available
02/26/2026	Coordination and Consensus
03/02/2026	Trustless Consensus	Quiz (3)
Popular Applications: Popular Cloud Use Cases, Services, and Deployments
03/05/2026	Example Practical Systems and Cloud Application Use Cases, Microservices	M4.R1(SR)	Project Titles Due Start Module (4)
03/09/2026	Data Processing, Applications Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning(ML) on the Cloud	M4R2(OR)	Homework (3) Due
Within the Clouds: How our popular cloud applications work?
03/12/2026	MapReduce, DML		Start Module (5)
03/16/2026	AL: Midterm Practice		Project Progress Due
03/19/2026	Midterm (75 Minutes during a 100-minute window)
03/23/2026	Parameter Server		Homework (4) Available Project feedback available
03/26/2026	TensorFlow
03/30/2026	LLMs	Quiz (4)	Presentations Schedule available
Final Words & The Outcomes
04/02/2026	Project Presentations		Homework(4) Due
04/09/2026	Project Presentations		Projects Outcomes Due

Acronyms used in the tentative schedule:
AL: Active Learning
LV: Lecture Video
IS: Interactive Session
R: Required Reading or Resource
SR: Strongly Recommended Reading or Resource
OR: Optional but Recommended Reading or Resource
OP: Optional Reading or Resource
OAS: Online-only Asynchronous Session

Note: If not explicitly indicated otherwise, availability and the submission deadlines are on the 11:59pm of the indicated dates.

References & Resources

For the complete list of resources and references used in this course please see this page.