The Cambridge Systems Colloquium

Thursday 27 October, 2005

Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK

New: program, attendees, notes

Accommodation and travel information 

Hosted by:

• The Cambridge Systems and Networking Group, Microsoft Research, http://www.research.microsoft.com/camsys
• The Systems Research Group, Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG
• Intel Research Cambridge, http://www.intel-research.net/cambridge

“Hard problems in big systems”

The Cambridge Systems Colloquium will provide a forum for systems researchers to exchange ideas about, and share experiences of, the particular challenges of large scale and complex systems, ranging from multi-core to multi-VM to multi-machine. The focus will cover highly distributed and/or concurrent systems, systems with demanding ‘real-world’ workloads, and the complex operating and development environments that support them. We intend that the workshop will be highly interactive and will stimulate discussion on issues such as how do we ensure that large scale systems work properly? How do we make them perform well? Can we make it easier for programmers to exploit them? Do we need new paradigms and new approaches, or are there old solutions that should be revisited?

Since many participants will also be attending SOSP, a coach from Brighton to Cambridge will be provided the afternoon of Wednesday 26th. That evening attendees will be invited to dinner at a college to kick off the workshop discussion and experience a venerable Cambridge tradition. The technical program on Thursday 27th will consist of invited presentations on systems research topics not recently aired at SOSP.

Cambridge is the home of 3 strong systems research groups at Microsoft Research, Cambridge University and Intel Research, all co-located 1.5 miles from the city centre. The London airports are easily accessible by public transport, and participants taking flights home on Friday morning will have ample time to travel on Thursday evening. Those wishing to stay longer would be welcome to visit any of our labs, and the city of Cambridge is a fascinating and beautiful tourist destination.

Participation will be limited to 50 people who are active researchers in the field, including students, and registration will be free. If you are interested in attending, please contact Rebecca Isaacs (risaacs@microsoft.com) or Jon Crowcroft (jon.crowcroft@cl.cam.ac.uk) with a brief note describing your current research and whether you would like to give a presentation.