Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium

4:15PM, Wednesday, February 25, 1998
NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building B03

Big Data and the Next Wave of InfraStress

John Mashey
Silicon Graphics

About the Talk:

Data is growing faster than ever, with a sudden uptick now expected in disk storage in late 1998. The combination of Big Data and the Net is already creating, and will create much more stress on the infrastructure (i.e., InfraStress) of computing: interconnect bandwidths, I/O systems, operating systems, disk file systems, backup, networking, where the infrastructure is unable to change as fast as the subsystems (CPUs, DRAM, disks).

The talk examines various technology trends expected over the next few years, tries to pinpoint the likely stress periods and reasons, and looks at some of the potential solutions for the problems. By accident, it appears that several technology trends just happen to be maximizing InfraStress in th 1998-2002 period, just in time to add to year 2000 problems.

Put another way: if you are standing on a dike, and you see a big tidal wave coming in the distance, you hope that the dike is pretty strong already, because you have some building to do. Scalability of hardware and software, high input/output performance, and mature 64-bit systems provide a good foundation, while lack of these will cause "excitement" for users.

About the speaker:

Data forthcoming

Contact Data: John Mashey
EMAIL: mash@sgi.com
DDD: 650-933-3090
FAX: 650-932-3090
USPS: Silicon Graphics/Cray Research 6L-005,
2011 N. Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94043-1389