DATE: Thursday, July 17, 2003
TIME: Noon - 1 pm
PLACE: Wean Hall 8220

SPEAKER:
Geoff Kuenning
Harvey Mudd College

TITLE:
The Disk is Dead! Long Live the Disk!

ABSTRACT:
Recent declines in RAM prices have made it reasonable to discuss replacing disks with battery-backed RAM as the primary persistent storage medium in desktop computers. RAM has already taken over in some areas (such as PDAs), but disk is still the only reasonable choice for most large-scale applications. In this talk, I will describe Conquest, a hybrid disk/RAM filesystem that combines the best of each medium while providing a transition path toward the day when disks can be discarded. Surprisingly, Conquest outperforms disk-only filesystems in its disk mode, RAM-only filesystems in its RAM mode, and cache-backed filesystems in any mode.

BIO:
Geoff Kuenning is an assistant professor of computer science at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. His research interests include file systems, distributed computing, and performance analysis. He received his B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Michigan State University, and his Ph.D. from UCLA. He is the author of the Seer automated hoarding system, the Cheap Rumor replicated file system, and the popular ispell spelling checker.

SDI / LCS Seminar Questions?
Karen Lindenfelser, 86716, or visit www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/