tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post5665025180094963172..comments2024-03-28T00:36:13.790-07:00Comments on Volatile and Decentralized: What I wish systems researchers would work onMatt Welshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04255792550910131960noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-83681234775125353522013-06-07T10:18:00.382-07:002013-06-07T10:18:00.382-07:00Isn't what you describe an extension of what S...Isn't what you describe an extension of what SIGDANGER in AIX is meant to be? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-14121744109162867452013-06-06T04:27:43.438-07:002013-06-06T04:27:43.438-07:00Nice stuff, keep posting...Nice stuff, keep posting...IT Careershttp://jobsearch.monster.com.ph/category/it.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-36533125879040755212013-05-27T09:27:22.088-07:002013-05-27T09:27:22.088-07:00I would *LOVE* it if more academics would focus on...I would *LOVE* it if more academics would focus on problems that are 5-10 years out. Hence my suggestion to work on radically new computing platforms (assuming you made it to the end of the blog post, maybe you didn't). <br /><br />Regardless, many academics are focused on problems that are 6-12 months out, and as long as they are going to do this, then I think it would be much more interesting for them to work on problems that could have huge impact (rather than quibbling over the best API for disk I/O, a problem which has been around for 20 years and frankly is not something that is holding up human progress).<br /><br />I do not think that academics should exclusively focus on 5-to-10-year problems. The risk of going too far in that direction is that academia becomes completely irrelevant. I advocate a portfolio of near-term and far-term research; my argument is that the current trend towards near-term focus is often *too* near term and often uninteresting.Matt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-75937309881361564782013-05-26T20:13:00.167-07:002013-05-26T20:13:00.167-07:00Matt, have you heard of the word "disruptive&...Matt, have you heard of the word "disruptive" in the context of research? Academia should be working on problems that are 5-10 years forward-looking -- so much so that it *might* (not should) transform or create a new industry. Suggesting that academics solve current problems that you face in the industry, whatever the scale is, is below the belt. Such behavior may be pathological to some Google employees, but "scale" does not always necessarily bring interesting and/or futuristic research problems.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-77960978897351742012013-05-22T09:05:52.862-07:002013-05-22T09:05:52.862-07:00Stefan - I agree 100%. My point (which has since b...Stefan - I agree 100%. My point (which has since been deleted) was simply that academics aren't entitled to public funding to work on anything they want. This only works because our society values open-ended research. This is a good thing, but I think it's important to make sure that the politicians who make these decisions understand that.Matt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-48726139015423831352013-05-22T08:57:10.817-07:002013-05-22T08:57:10.817-07:00It is the nature of public research funding, and p...It is the nature of public research funding, and particularly in science, engineering and medicine, that we do not know how to pick "winners" a priori. Hell, we can't even do that with the published papers (e.g., compare contemporary "best paper" awards with any long term measure of impact and you'll find a poor correlation at best). That does not mean that impact doesn't happen, it means that its hard to predict where it comes from. It is not merely appetite to expand our knowledge that drives broad-based STEM funding (in fact I don't know if we have sensitive enough apparatus to measure how low this is on the legislative priority rankings), but experience that out of this kind of portfolio we end up with some real winners or combinations of winners that are transformative. <br /><br />Right now we have a fight going on in Congress precisely around this issue, where Lamar Smith's bill would require the NSF director to certify that all funded proposals are clearly in the national interest or groundbreaking. The underlying motivation here is the flawed notion that we can make research arbitrarily more efficient through funding selectivity. This works as well as you can prognosticate. This works poorly over the short term and disastrously over the long term. Stefan Savagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06782897630888783977noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-20581240543575203122013-05-21T21:18:35.829-07:002013-05-21T21:18:35.829-07:00Arguably this is already very much the case with p...Arguably this is already very much the case with pretty much every cloud infrastructure system out there: a virtual machine monitor that hosts potentially many "guest OSs" on top.Matt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-64235843553365795872013-05-21T21:17:43.937-07:002013-05-21T21:17:43.937-07:00Or maybe these aren't very interesting researc...Or maybe these aren't very interesting research questions anymore after all. It feels like there has been an endless stream of academic discussions about layering, abstraction, extensibility, etc. in operating systems but maybe we should just declare victory and move on to other, more pressing problems?Matt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-58670351690566443502013-05-21T21:15:13.457-07:002013-05-21T21:15:13.457-07:00I agree that Singularity is cool, but if you think...I agree that Singularity is cool, but if you think that's the only radical idea in the last 20 years you aren't reading enough.Matt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-39141726807495577122013-05-21T08:14:12.749-07:002013-05-21T08:14:12.749-07:00Well, I guess that given that a sockets allocation...Well, I guess that given that a sockets allocation was reported as a "file descriptor" constraint, I can guess which OS you were working with.<br /><br />Many of the problems you describe have to do with metrics in OS internals. Better diagnostics and reporting would be helpful. It does add overhead, but that's a good topic for academic research.<br /><br />Otherwise it's these are application design and integration problems.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-84911042749835592642013-05-21T06:41:34.314-07:002013-05-21T06:41:34.314-07:00Maybe OS systems have become too complicated for u...Maybe OS systems have become too complicated for us mere mortals, perhaps research should be towards OS systems being more self aware and how they are relating to other systems etc. Intelligence or a least assisted intelligence?<br /><br />Probably a step (or many thousand steps) beyond better configuration, but your example with a self aware OS could have resolved your example itself or least indicated the problem.<br /><br />Perhaps systems should be less cloaked in black magic and 'configured in more natural language. Although might result in some redundancies of IT staff when the mail room manage the IT operation during their lunch break!<br /><br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-57599035804979867202013-05-21T04:37:34.674-07:002013-05-21T04:37:34.674-07:00I would like to see virtualization as a fundamenta...I would like to see virtualization as a fundamental component, maybe the only essential component, of a new OS.<br /><br />JonoAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-43743336493249828032013-05-21T03:16:29.239-07:002013-05-21T03:16:29.239-07:00I'm with you on the general idea that there se...I'm with you on the general idea that there seems to be little "innovation" happening these days. But I feel it's a much more broad phenomenon than only system design.<br /><br />Since the 60s/70s (perhaps 80s) it seems nothing truly "new" has even been "discovered", never mind considered. Not systems, nor hardware, nor even programming in general. Most (if not all) research seems to focus on optimizing and/or enhancing old ideas.<br /><br />Perhaps it's a situation of the possibilities reaching a plateau and requiring some new breakthrough to start a total new direction before new innovation can occur.<br /><br />For the last 20 years (at least) the most significant developments seem to be JIT compilers and GC (in programming that is). The 80's fad on RISC processors is where the current batch of mobile chips (i.e. ARM and the like) originated. As for OS, not much "new" have been developed - perhaps more "robust" FS's like ZFS. But all these are simply implementations using one or more ideas from before. No radically new principle.<br /><br />Thanks Unknown for the link to Singularity. It does "sound" good, but once you get into it - it's still just an amalgamation of different features. Hopefully it's not similar to its namesake and just a "black hole" sucking everything in but not giving anything back.<br /><br />Maybe I'm off base and "Hot" doesn't need to be something "out-of-this-world". Perhaps something like Singularity is a good idea: i.e. combine all the developments thus far to try and realise all the best ideals. Or at least all those which are possible to interact without too much detriment in each other's operations.<br /><br />I'm still a bit sceptical about what "should" form part of the system, and what should be left to the application layer. This write-up seems to indicate one place where it pays to move a normally kernel-level function into the application level:<br />http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/5/13/the-secret-to-10-million-concurrent-connections-the-kernel-i.html<br /><br />Perhaps that could be another research idea: Which portions of the OS needs to be in a monolithic core and which might benefit by placing them as "plug-in" ancillaries.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14033215122995595548noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-21312253643331648482013-05-21T01:28:19.710-07:002013-05-21T01:28:19.710-07:00The only really radical approach I've seen to ...The only really radical approach I've seen to O/S in 20 years or so is Singularity (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/). You have to commend Microsoft for actually funding this kind of project.Rob Ghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03479787549028858677noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-63356503674692717682013-05-20T15:01:03.409-07:002013-05-20T15:01:03.409-07:00Academics are not entitled to receive any public f...Academics are not entitled to receive any public funding at all, whether or not they work on problems you consider high impact, and many don’t, except for their educational work; the entire setup of your post is that “the operating systems community is somewhat stuck in a rut,” which certainly implies that the whole “community” is producing research of no or little value; high impact and aesthetic work are both super important to me, and to repeat, it’s wonderful there’s room for both.Eddie Kohlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11048081634717705640noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-62394704358108611412013-05-20T08:11:30.209-07:002013-05-20T08:11:30.209-07:00I wanna connect your essay to Ellen Ullman’s from ...I wanna connect your essay to Ellen Ullman’s from over the weekend:<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/sunday/how-to-be-a-woman-programmer.html<br /><br />which is beautifully written.<br /><br />“What will save you is tacking into the love of the work, into the desire that brought you there in the first place.”<br /><br />Some of us are motivated by the desire to have “impact,” however that’s defined. (Many Googlers seem to define “impact” as “anything that will improve my work life at Google.”) But others have internal, almost aesthetic motivations. Academia, wonderfully, has room for both. But the impact people can seem crass to the aesthetes, and the aesthetes can seem irrelevant to the impacted. Oh well!<br /><br />Admittedly “Hot” conferences are supposed to be about impact. (I don’t often attend.) And many papers fall into the pessimal bin of neither pleasing nor impactful. But that’s collateral damage from our system. We don’t know how to support only great work; we do know how to support a lot of mediocre work and some good work.<br /><br />A great sequence from Nicholson Baker’s <i>The Anthologist</i> about “waste” in poetry applies way more broadly:<br /><br />http://books.google.com/books?id=GNZl5dEQ7PEC&pg=PT103&lpg=PT103&ots=octAfBxQK3<br /><br />“What does it mean to be a great poet? It means that you wrote one or two great poems. Or great parts of poems. That’s all it means. Don’t try to picture the waste or it will alarm you.”Eddie Kohlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11048081634717705640noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-86993650266857399062013-05-17T22:34:13.276-07:002013-05-17T22:34:13.276-07:00I've been asked a few times to serve on panels...I've been asked a few times to serve on panels since leaving academia and am happy to do it, but it's hard to justify the time and travel commitment. If I could review proposals without having to travel to DC it would be much easier to say yes. I do a lot of proposal reviewing for Google's research award program and chair the mobile funding committee, so I try to give back since I think it's incredibly important to support academic research. Matt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-79719697915127430132013-05-17T21:47:12.567-07:002013-05-17T21:47:12.567-07:00Matt -- Just wondering, do you serve on NSF panels...Matt -- Just wondering, do you serve on NSF panels now that you are in industry? Based on my experience (and I've managed to serve on at least one outside of the CISE directorate), this type of perspective is exactly what is needed. (In my experience, panels dominated by researchers from industry and national labs are far more reasonable than panels dominated by academics -- and I am an academic).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-68568914505125263932013-05-17T12:41:50.882-07:002013-05-17T12:41:50.882-07:00The answers to these questions are more affected b...The answers to these questions are more affected by how the work is done and by whom than by the details of the problems being solved.<br /><br />If the right person wades into one of these areas, they're going to have excellent industry contacts and a bunch of great students; they'll implement a ton of stuff, throw it away, and then do it right; they'll evaluate it on big, real problems; probably most importantly they'll be able to find the right spin which teases out the research ideas so it doesn't look like a bunch of hacks. They'll know where to submit and when, and when they submit a paper the right people will read it and give it a fair shake. When the paper gets accepted it'll be great and it will get some good buzz at SOSP or whatever and then on some blogs and finally all the grad student seminars will read it forever afterwards and try to emulate the success.<br /><br />On the other hand, the wrong research group is not going to nail as many of these aspects and the papers and grants will suffer accordingly.<br /><br />Does there exist a research problem so bad that a top person couldn't tease a couple of good papers out of it if they had to? Probably so, but it would have to be really bad...<br /><br />I had a version of this comment using people's names; it was more fun to write but probably not that helpful.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14155124764305778798noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-42430032241269603772013-05-17T11:12:06.352-07:002013-05-17T11:12:06.352-07:00Wow, such insightful commentary - thanks for the f...Wow, such insightful commentary - thanks for the feedback!<br /><br />Normally I would delete a comment like this, but since you've shown how immature and idiotic you are, I'm going to let it stand. Of course, you're not willing to sign your name, not that it really matters who you are anyway. You're a nobody.<br />Matt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-15094868656280594382013-05-17T09:59:21.777-07:002013-05-17T09:59:21.777-07:00Suck a dick Welsh. Everyone knows you're so f...Suck a dick Welsh. Everyone knows you're so full of hot air you'd make a hot air balloon look solid. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-11980129807572908942013-05-16T20:05:15.305-07:002013-05-16T20:05:15.305-07:00Ted, this is a good question -- I don't honest...Ted, this is a good question -- I don't honestly know. See my earlier post on "academic freedom" which talks a bit about some of the constraints on what academics can practically work on:<br /><br />http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-other-side-of-academic-freedom.htmlMatt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-87781515697682697202013-05-16T20:03:06.872-07:002013-05-16T20:03:06.872-07:00This is a neat idea. It's related to virtual m...This is a neat idea. It's related to virtual memory ballooning which is a technique used by a virtual machine monitor to induce a VM to free memory:<br /><br />http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-4-esx-vcenter/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.resourcemanagement.doc_41/managing_memory_resources/c_memory_balloon_driver.htmlMatt Welshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07077674014671176946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-15516808901230317912013-05-16T19:52:45.621-07:002013-05-16T19:52:45.621-07:00What do you think are the chances that a professor...What do you think are the chances that a professor (or graduate student) who tried to do work in the areas you suggested would (a) be able to get funding for that research or (b) be able to get a paper on that subject accepted to a conference or journal that tenure committees think highly of?<br /><br />It's one thing if the a potential research area is hard for an academic to do work in; there will always be smart people who love challenges. But if they don't get rewarded (or are actively penalized) for doing work in a particular area, that's quite another thing....Theodore Tsohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01104781554189101015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9186457242428335144.post-8831471263462195882013-05-16T18:22:25.205-07:002013-05-16T18:22:25.205-07:00Anyone who's ever been on an NSF panel has see...Anyone who's ever been on an NSF panel has seen this dynamic in action. I was on one once where at the start the program manager exhorted the panel to look for high-risk/high-reward things to fund and not just fund incremental work. At one point, a proposal came up with a modest budget request that a number of us thought was really intriguing. One panelist then said "It's interesting, but I'm not sure it'll work. If you're going to to fund it, maybe fund it for 6 months tops. I gave it a fair." Needless to say, the proposal didn't get funded. <br /><br />Like democracy, peer review is the worst possible system, except for all of the others. It's important that members of the academic community are aware of its problems so that they can actively work against them.PatrickBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07301138541560512292noreply@blogger.com