People of Systems & Architecture: James Mickens

With most systems and architecture conferences taking the online route, we figured it’s a great time to get to know a few people in the systems/architecture research community. People of Systems & Architecture is a series of interviews conducted this year, and continues in the same vein as the People of PL, People of POPL, … Read more

Why stream processing systems are now more relevant than ever

Traditional data management software and algorithms are built on the concept of persistent data sets that are reliably stored in stable storage and can be queried and updated several times throughout their lifetimes. In reality, however, data is rarely complete and stationary. In its latest report, the International Data Corporation predicts that in 5 years … Read more

Call for Papers (HotNets 2020)

The 19th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets 2020, November 5-6 @ Chicago) will bring together researchers in computer networks and systems to engage in a lively debate on the theory and practice of computer networking. We invite researchers and practitioners to submit short position papers. We encourage papers that identify fundamental open … Read more

The Increasing Heterogeneity of Cloud Hardware and What It Means for Systems

Dominoes

The past five years have seen a significant change in the way cloud servers look. Traditionally homogeneous cloud systems are progressively shifting to heterogeneous designs, either through special purpose chips, like Google’s TPUs, or reconfigurable fabrics, like Microsoft’s Catapult and Brainwave projects; sometimes, they even adopt a combination of the two. This post provides an … Read more