What does the operating system ever do for me? - Systems Challenges in Graph Analytics

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Event details

Date 14.09.2016
Hour 15:0016:00
Location
Category Conferences - Seminars
By: Dr Tim Harris - Oracle Research Laboratories (Cambridge)

Abstract:
Graphs are at the core of many data processing problems, whether that is searching through billions of records for suspicious interactions, ranking the importance of web pages based on their connectivity, or identifying possible “missing” friends on a social network. Using these workloads as examples, I will describe challenges in building efficient parallel implementations, and the ways in which the operating system is no longer providing effective abstractions of the underlying computer hardware. I will show how obtaining good performance and scalability requires careful control over the placement of computation and storage within a system, and an understanding of the structure of the data being processed. I will then talk about how I see the role of the operating system evolving in distributed “rack scale” systems.

Bio:
I am at Oracle Labs in Cambridge, UK. My research interests span multiple layers of the stack. I am particularly interested in parallel programming, OS / runtime-system interaction, and opportunities for specialized architecture support for particular workloads. Right now I am looking at OS and VM support for distributed runtime systems—particularly in the setting of distributed graph algorithms running on clusters. I collaborate with the Scalable Synchronization group in Burlington, MA, USA, and with the Green-Marl project in CA, USA. Prior to Oracle, my recent projects have included language support for asynchronous message passing in the Barrelfish research OS, and ideas for architecture support for parts of language runtime systems (e.g., synchronization and GC). I have also worked extensively on transactional memory (TM), most recently on applying ideas learnt from STM systems to designing an abstraction for low-cost multi-word atomic updates for use in building shared-memory data structures. I was on the faculty of the University of Cambridge, and completed a PhD on providing application programmers with safe control over low-level features of the JVM (dynamic complication, object placement, thread scheduling).  

Practical information

  • General public
  • Free
  • This event is internal

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