The Cross-layer Reliability Visioning Study Group met July 8-9, 2009 in Los Alamos, NM.  This was the second of three scheduled meetings focused on how to address the growing challenges imposed by changes in device technology, system sizes, and application requirements.  A major goal of the Visioning process is to reach some consensus on how to achieve reliable computing using unpredictable components across different layers that dictate system reliability (i.e., device technology, design, architecture, software).  While the first meeting focused on defining the multi-dimensional cross-layer reliability design space, including both theoretical and practical aspects of the problem, the second meeting focused on considering cross-layer reliability from different application domains (e.g., […]

Last week the New York Times printed an article by John Markoff entitled, Do We Need a New Internet? In the article, Markoff states, “…there is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over.” Stanford’s Nick McKeown is quoted in the article, “Unless we’re willing to rethink today’s Internet, we’re just waiting for a series of public catastrophes.” The article speculates that in a new network architecture, some users would “give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety.” It’s certainly exciting to see core computer […]

NSF has an account for Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC), to support the development of very large research instruments. Typically, the goal of these instruments, which may cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and tens of millions of dollars annually to operate, is to find answers to some of the most fundamental questions in science today. For example, LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) is designed to detect ripples in space-time caused by changes in very large masses (e.g., a star exploding). Such observations, if made successfully, would finally confirm Einstein’s prediction of the existence of gravitational waves. LIGO has a construction cost of about $300M and […]