About
Our Mission
To advance research in operating systems, computer networks, databases, programming languages, security, parallel systems, distributed systems, grid and cloud computing.
What is Systems?
"Systems is the study of the design and implementation of computer systems such as compilers, databases, networks, and operating systems. Topics include the hardware/software interface, the networking stack, digital architecture, memory models, optimization, concurrency, privacy, security, distributed and large-scale systems, reliability and fault tolerance, and related algorithms and theoretical topics."
-http://csmajor.stanford.edu/Tracks.shtmlDetecting Systems People
"An experimentalist will slip one or more of the following keywords and phrases into lectures and technical conversations: ``architecture,'' ``memory,'' ``cpu'' (sometimes abbreviated``CISC'' or ``RISC''), ``I/O'' or ``bus'', ``network'', ``interface'', ``virtual'', ``compile'' or ``compiler'', ``OS'' or ``system'', ``distributed'', ``program'' or ``code'', and ``binary''. They talk about building programs and running the resulting system on real computer systems. They refer to companies and products, and use acronyms liberally. Their lectures often end with a graph or chart of measured system performance. You can also recognize an experimentalist because they describe in excruciating detail how they set up an experiment to measure a certain value even if the measurement produced exactly the expected results. (I once sat through an hour lecture where someone carefully explained how they used three computer systems to measure network traffic, when their whole point was simply to show that the network was not the cause of the problem they were investigating.) "
-http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.criticize.htmlThe Night Watch