Abstract:
A huge challenge in developing autonomic computing systems is to build
devices capable of orienting themselves in confusing situations and finding
the resources needed to function correctly. An autonomic device lives
in a world of varying connectivity, changing roles and activities, and
changing security. It may need to sense and react to events occurring
nearby while also monitoring and reacting to situations at locations remote
in the network. A physician’s assistant, for example, might need to monitor
a patient’s status, find the closest display screen for displaying an
X-ray, print the patient’s history on an appropriately secure printer,
and locate an expert on spinal fractures available for an urgent conference
call. Lacking the right tools, autonomic computing will stall, much as
ubiquitous computing and Jini stalled in the recent past. A new generation
of technologies based on peer-to-peer gossip is breaking through the barriers
and will enable a revolutionary step forward.
Ken Birman received
his Ph.D. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley in 1981 and then took
a faculty position at Cornell University, where he has been a Professor
since 1982. His research explores a number of issues in distributed systems
reliability, scalability, fault-tolerance and security. A system he built,
Isis, is currently used to operate the New York Stock Exchange, Swiss
Stock Exchange, French air traffic control system and the AEGIS warship;
subsequent systems (Horus, Ensemble) pushed to the performance limits
for data replication and fault-tolerance technologies. In 1988, Birman
founded Isis Distributed Systems, which produced a series of products
in the area before being acquired by Stratus Computer in 1993. In 1995,
Birman headed the DARPA ISAT study of survivability of nationally critical
infrastructure, which helped establish government policy in the area.
More recently, he has headed a research effort to look at scalability
and stability of large-scale networked applications at Cornell, while
also founding a new company, Reliable Network Solutions, to develop products
for Internet-scale monitoring, control and systems management. Birman
is a Fellow of the ACM, and was Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on
Computing Systems from 1993 to 1997
