Building Scalable Internet Infrastructures From Scratch
Igor Sviridov, 23 and Me
03/13/2008
Internet startups often require rapid deployment of scalable Internet infrastructures; most are designed and built by a small (sometimes single-person) teams of generalist(s). This talk would describe approaches, tools and components accumulated after doing this for 10+ years. Topics discussed (or at least mentioned) would include hardware, and provider selection, data center design, remote management, automatic deployment, virtualization, monitoring, security
Security Research At Symantec Research Labs
Darren Shou, Symantec
03/20/2008
This talk will discuss how to guard against never before seen attacks, protect the contents of one's safe from those with the keys, and deal with zombies using only a keyboard.
The Workload You Have And The System You Get: The Impact Of Workload Characterization In Computer System Design
Lodewijk Bonebakker, SUN
04/03/2008
System design takes place against a set of requirements. These requirements may be functional, technical, or financial. In the computer system design process there is the desire to perform well on standardized benchmarks, keep the processor cost effective and do well on workloads important to the customer base. It is infeasible to do in-depth analysis of all workloads, thus designers have to resort to a limited set of workloads that are assumed to be representative. Choosing these representative workloads is an interaction between the designers and the marketing department. One of the serious challenges for computer system and processor designers is the fact that several years lie between their design decisions and the final system. During that time the relevance of the design workloads may change. As a result, the processor delivered may no longer be optimal for the market when it is first released, leading to loss of revenue as well as prestige. This talk outlines the tension between general purpose and specific processors, the rate of change of workloads in the market and gives examples of processor design failures with an analysis of what the leading cause might have been.
Users And Batteries: Interactions And Adaptive Energy Management In Mobile Systems
Sami Rollins, University of San Francisco
04/10/2008
Battery lifetime has become one of the top usability concerns of mobile systems. While many endeavors have been devoted to improving battery lifetime, they have fallen short in understanding how users interact with batteries. In response, we have conducted a systematic user study on battery use and recharge behavior, an important aspect of user-battery interaction, on both laptop computers and mobile phones. Based on this study, we present three important findings: 1) most recharges happen when the battery has substantial energy left, 2) a considerable portion of the recharges are driven by context (location and time), and those driven by battery levels usually occur when the battery level is high, and 3) there is great variation among users and systems. These findings indicate that there is substantial opportunity to enhance existing energy management policies, which solely focus on extending battery lifetime and often lead to excess battery energy upon recharge, by adapting the aggressiveness of the policy to match the usage and recharge patterns of the device. We have designed, deployed, and evaluated a user-and statistics-driven energy management system, Llama, to exploit the battery energy in a user-adaptive and user-friendly fashion to better serve the user. We also conducted a user study after the deployment that shows Llama effectively harvests excess battery energy for a better user experience (brighter display) or higher quality of service (more application data) without a noticeable change in battery lifetime.
Simulating Planetary Environments
Jason Shankel, Maxis
04/17/2008
Complex game worlds require complex dynamic simulation. This talk will describe methods for simulating atmospheric weather, ocean currents and the spread of life in a game-quality environment.