Hot Topics in OS Research
Andy Wang
COP 5611
Advanced Operating Systems
Some Hot Areas
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Safely executing untrusted code
File and storage systems
Ubiquitous computing
Virtual machine environments
Reliability
Safely Executing Untrusted
Code
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Type-safe languages
Virtual machines
Verified code
File and Storage Systems
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Very large-scale file systems
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Reliability
Performance vs. cost of ownership
Energy consumption
Very long-term storage
Peer-to-peer backup system
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Challenges: privacy, consistency over
encrypted data, fairness
File and Storage Systems
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Some advanced tools:
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Rabin fingerprinting
Compare-by-hash
Convergent encryption
Erasure code
Bloom filter
Search on encrypted domain
Ubiquitous Computing
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Lots and lots of inexpensive mobile
wireless devices
Distributed resource sharing across
untrusted domains
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Economic models
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Bartering
Tickets
Credits
Ubiquitous Computing
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Distributed resource discovery
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Pastry, Tapestry, Chord
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Hypercube routing
Distributed radix sort
O(log(n))
O(1) lookup with clever replication
Distributed access control models
Peer-to-peer coordination
Ubiquitous Computing
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Constrained resources
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CPU
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Memory, disk
Variable bandwidth
Energy
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Cannot afford strong security measures
Battery density approaches that of a grenade
Sensor networks
Ubiquitous Computing
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E-commerce
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How to authenticate with unknown
servers?
How to make e-cash anonymous,
transferable, non-traceable, and nonforgeable?
How to prevent free-rides?
How to provide micropayments?
Virtual Machine Environments
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OS support for efficient executions
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Parasitic virtualization
Reliability
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Running device drivers in isolated
kernel address spaces
Static code analysis for common
programming errors
Soft-state-only systems, designed to
crash
Reliability
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Use computational dependencies to
locate failures
Secure hardware to certify software
General security
Revisiting Existing Designs
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Path
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Capriccio
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Vertical paths vs. layers
Event-based scheduling
Threads with linked stacks to conserve
storage
Conquest
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Lots of RAM
Introspective Computing
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Self-administration
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Configuration, optimization, evolution
Exploit contextual information
Autonomous computing
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Automatically detect and repair system
problems
Performance
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Rewrite binaries for smaller memory
footprint
Use compiler to cluster and issue bulk
system calls
Download user-level binaries into the
kernel