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NSF Grand Challenge in Distributed Systems. Timothy Roscoe (speaking personally). What is a Grand Challenge?. Meaningful to normal people Must capture imagination Societal benefit I try to take a broad view of “society” Achievable / demonstrable Clear sense of when to declare victory
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NSF Grand Challenge in Distributed Systems Timothy Roscoe (speaking personally)
What is a Grand Challenge? • Meaningful to normal people • Must capture imagination • Societal benefit • I try to take a broad view of “society” • Achievable / demonstrable • Clear sense of when to declare victory • Something radically different • From what can be done now • Redesigns the Internet • Errr… OK.
Areas unworthy of aGrand Challenge • Management? • Mostly cost/labor reduction exercise • Obvious skill-reduction techniques from the phone system are yet to be applied • Unlikely to capture imagination…
Areas unworthy of aGrand Challenge • Management? • Security • People don’t care about security, they care about insecurity • Successful security can never be demonstrated • Security will never be 100% successful • Provides no new functionality
Areas unworthy of aGrand Challenge • Management? • Security • Health • Clean water? Malaria? HIV? Avian flu? • Vital! But not for us to lead • Information management? • Most people have no medical records • Just databases + fiddly security policy?
Areas unworthy of aGrand Challenge • Management? • Security • Health • Anything with an overt political agenda I’d subscribe to… • What’s left? • Science?
Comprehend the Planet • Understand Big Things in realtime • Population, climate, ecology, economy, • Note: one large chaotic system • Fusion of: • Sensor systems • Scientific models (currently offline) • Distributed services techniques • At very large scale. • Ought to be possible to formulate a demonstrable goal for this…
Oh no, it’s the Grid! • Actually, NO! - it’s rather better: • Online, Continuous, Realtime • Actually a distributed system, • not a large batch system. • Captures most of the areas: • Dist. data / query processing • Localizable network resources • Security, networking, fault tolerance, autonomics, whatever. • Requires a new network design
Summary • Think big. • Our horizons have shrunk So expand them! • Engage with other communities • Thanks!