Keynote 1
Where have we been and where are we going?
Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Abstract
The world of computers has moved at an incredible pace during the past 40 years. In 1983, the computer world was dominated by the IBM System/370 mainframes, the smallest model of which (the 135) had 96 KB of RAM and cost $475,000. But if you didn’t have that kind of money, you could get a VAX 11/780 minicomputer with 1 MB of memory for a mere $120,000. That year also marked the introduction of the IBM PC/XT, which ran MS-DOS from a revolutionary 10-MB hard disk. A high-speed Hayes modem ran at 1200 bps but it also cost $1200. That didn’t matter so much, however, because the first graphical browser, Mosaic, wouldn’t be released for another decade. By way of comparison, an iPad is about 500 times faster than the System 370/135, has 10,000 times more RAM, and costs about 1000x less. But this talk isn’t only about the past 40 years. It is also about the next 40 years.
Biography
Andrew S. Tanenbaum was born in New York City and raised in White Plains, NY. He has an S.B.from M.I.T. and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently a Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Prof. Tanenbaum is the principal designer of MINIX, which served as the inspiration and platform on which Linus Torvalds created Linux. In addition, Tanenbaum is the author or coauthor of five books, which together have been translated in more than 20 languages. All in all, there are over 175 editions, as shown on https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/book_covers/index.html Many of his Ph.D. students have gone on to greater glory in Academia and industry. He is very proud of them. In this respect he resembles a mother hen. Tanenbaum has lectured on a variety of topics all over the world. He has been keynote speaker at 40 conferences and has given talks at over 100 universities and companies in 15 countries all over North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. In 2004, Tanenbaum became an Academy Professor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2008, he received a prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euro to do research on reliable operating systems. Tanenbaum is a Fellow of the ACM, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1994 he was the recipient of the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award. In 1997 he won the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science. In 2007 he won the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr., Education Medal. In 2008 he won the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2015 he won the inaugural Eurosys Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also won numerous other awards, some of which are on his Wikipedia page. He has two honorary doctorates. His home page is at http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast
Keynote 2
Software for Fast Storage Hardware
Willy Zwaenepoel
Abstract
Storage technologies are entering the market with performance vastly superior to conventional storage devices. This technology shift requires a complete rethinking of the software storage stack.
In this talk I will give two examples of our work with Optane-based solid-state (block) devices that illustrate the need for and the benefit of a wholesale redesign.
First, I will describe the Kvell key-value (KV) store. The key observation underlying Kvell is that conventional KV software on fast devices is bottlenecked by the CPU rather than by the device. Kvell therefore focuses on minimizing CPU intervention.
Second, I will describe the Kvell+ OLTP/OLAP system built on top of Kvell. The key underlying observation here is that these storage devices have become so fast that the conventional implementation of snapshot isolation – maintaining multiple versions – quickly leads to the device filling up. Kvell therefore focuses processes new versions as they are created.
Biography
Willy Zwaenepoel received his BS/MS from Ghent University in 1979, and his MS and PhD from Stanford University, in 1980 and 1984, respectively. He is currently dean of engineering at the University of Sydney. Previously, he has been on the faculty at Rice University and head of the school of computer and communication sciences at EPFL. He has been involved with a number of startups including Nutanix (Nasdaq:NTNX). He was elected IEEE Fellow in 1998 and ACM Fellow in 2000 and received a number of awards for teaching and research, including the IEEE Tsutomu Kanai Award and the Eurosys Lifetime Achievement Award. His main interests are in operating systems and distributed systems.
Keynote 3
AI for Distributed Systems
Sam Lightstone
Abstract
Meta executive and former IBM CTO for AI will showcase how advances in AI are offering exciting new opportunities for distributed systems. The spectacular growth of Artificial Intelligence that followed the 2012 ImageNet challenge is unleashing what we can create and expanding the envelope of what problems can be solved in software. There are new opportunities for how we rethink caching, prefetching, networking, systems placement, access path selection and beyond. In this keynote Sam will explain why AI is creating disruption in classical engineering domains, summarize recent advances in AI, discuss opportunities for systems as well as where other methods should be applied.
Biography
Sam Lightstone is an executive and software engineer at Meta (formerly Facebook). Sam leads a number of technical initiatives across Meta’s infrastructure and operational data stack. Prior to joining Meta From 2020-2021 Sam was IBM Chief Technology Officer for AI. From 2017-2020 Sam was the IBM Chief Technology Officer for Data focusing on IBM’s database and big data portfolio. He is cofounder of the IEEE Workgroup on Self-Managing Database Systems. Sam has more than 65 patents issued and pending and has authored 4 books and over 30 papers. Sam’s books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. In his spare time he is an avid guitar player and fencer.
