Autonomic Computing Principles

Overview

There are many areas of research that can be said to have an "autonomic'' component. Computer operating systems is one. Fault tolerant computing in multiprocessor environments is another. The area of feedback control systems, which is the theory underlying all automatic guidance systems, is yet another. Some of these methods go across the traditional CS/EE/ME boundaries and perhaps are not familiar to all.

The purpose of this interdisciplinary meeting/seminar/workshop is to

• Understand the underlying principles of the various techniques that have been used in the past to control systems automatically. The idea would be to study the principles in detail.
• Study existing products from storage, databases, etc. where such methods are used, understand how these methods are applied, discuss if things could be done in a different/better way, and see if the methods can be generalized so that they can be used in other scenarios/products.
• Select, read, present, and discuss papers that are relevant to this topic.

Specific topics could include but are not limited to: process scheduling algorithms for maximizing/maximizing some criteria; queueing models of workloads; algorithms used in distributed fault tolerant/self healing; state-space modeling of feedback control systems; stability of feedback control systems; monitoring and control of network traffic; issues with setting and using policy; dynamic optimization in databases; quantitative methodologies for evaluating performance, ease of use, stability of such autonomic systems; various case studies; design simulation; etc.

Agenda

The general agenda is that we will first meet and collect information regarding what topics would be good to consider in detail. Then participants choose topics/papers/ book chapters to present. This will be a weekly meeting/seminar. I would prefer to have this to be a two hour meeting with one person responsible for each meeting. About 12-15 talks should take us to the end of this year; 5-6 have already expressed interest in talking at the seminar.

Registration/Feedback

An organizational/brainstorming meeting to discuss the possible seminar topics and speakers, convinient seminar dates and times, etc. will be held on
Date: Friday, 6th September
Time: 11-12 am
Place: J2-312

Resources

• Coffman and Denning, Operating Systems Theory, Prentice-Hall
• Diao, Hellerstein, Parekh and Tilbury, Feedback Control of Computing Systems , John Wiley and Sons (to appear).
• Katsuhiko Ogata, Modern Control Engineering, Prentice Hall.
• Conference/Journal papers.
• Books/Papers on related/complimentary topics (your suggestions are welcome).

Contact Information