Gustavo Alonso

Title: Sustainable Data Systems

Abstract: Efficiency is commonly defined as the ratio of the value of the output to the cost of producing that output. This can be translated as producing the most output using the least amount of resources.  In computer science, however, we often equate efficiency to optimizing speed although the two are by far not the same. At a time where computer architecture is evolving at incredible speeds and computing platforms are undergoing fundamental changes, I will argue in this talk that we need to emphasize efficiency, in the sense of minimizing resource utilization, to make data processing sustainable. Data management and data processing are at the heart of all applications, from conventional OLTP and OLAP to modern machine learning and artificial intelligence. Yet, most of our systems and techniques are based on assumptions that no longer hold. In the talk, I will give a brief summary of developments in computer systems, discuss how they affect data systems, and propose ideas to make academic research more meaningful from an efficiency, and thus sustainability, perspective.  

Short Bio: Gustavo Alonso is a professor in the Department of Computer Science of ETH Zurich where he is a member of the Systems Group (www.systems.ethz.ch) and the head of the Institute of Computing Platforms. He leads the AMD-ETHZ HACC (Heterogeneous Accelerated Compute Cluster) deployment at ETH (https://github.com/fpgasystems/hacc), with several hundred users worldwide, a research facility that supports exploring data center hardware-software co-design. His research interests include data management, cloud computing architecture, hardware acceleration for data science, and building systems on modern hardware. Gustavo holds degrees in telecommunication from the Madrid Technical University and an MS and PhD in Computer Science from UC Santa Barbara. Before joining ETH, he was a research scientist at IBM Almaden in San Jose, California. His research has led to 4 Test-of-Time Awards in databases, software runtimes, middleware, and mobile computing. Gustavo is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, a Distinguished Alumnus of the Department of Computer Science of UC Santa Barbara, and a recipient of the Lifetime Achievements Award from the European Chapter of ACM SIGOPS (EuroSys).