Each student must complete a class project. You are responsible for defining
your own project. Your project can be either an experimental investigation or
a survey or research paper. The project must be a fairly significant piece of
work. Students are encouraged to take on projects that involve experimental
efforts or proving new results (or both). However, survey papers are a perfectly
acceptable option --- if you take this option, it would be much preferable to survey
research that is more "cutting edge" rather than work from 10 or 20 years ago. As
an example, I would consider a paper that discusses to what extent existing timing-analysis
results can be applied on newly available (and proposed) multicore platforms
as quite interesting.
It is perfectly fine to use research from an RA position as the basis for your
class project. However, your project may not be based on work from another
course without the permission of me and the instructor for that course
(permission will be granted only if the total work involved is commensurate
with the amount of effort expected in both courses combined). Two-person
projects may be permitted, provided the total work involved is about twice that
of the typical single-person project.