The Pit and the Pendulum
COM1 Level 2
SR1, COM1-02-06
This is a distinguished talk as part of the NUS Computer Science Research Week 2019 (http://researchweek.comp.nus.edu.sg).
Abstract:
A key challenge in the design of distributed data stores is the balancing two conflicting goals: strong consistency (which directly translates into ease of programming) and performance. We'll explore this dilemma in a sequence of two talks.
In the first talk, I will review notions of correctness for concurrently executing transactions that correspond to different ways to balance these concerns and retrace the efforts to define their guarantees rigorously and in an implementation-independent fashion.
In the second talk, we will explore more deeply the extent to which the tension between performance and ease of programming is fundamental, and I will share what my students and I have recently learned while trying to overcome the traditional terms of this classic tradeoff.
Biodata:
Lorenzo Alvisi is the Tisch University Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. Prior to joining Cornell, he held an endowed professorship at UT Austin, where he is now a Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Lorenzo received his Ph.D. in 1996 from Cornell, after earning a Laurea cum Laude in Physics from the University of Bologna. His research interests are in the theory and practice of distributed computing. He is a Fellow of the ACM and IEEE, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, and the recipient of a Humboldt Research Award, an NSF Career Award, and several teaching awards. He serves on the editorial boards of ACM TOCS and Springer's Distributed Computing. In addition to distributed computing, he is passionate about classical music and red Italian motorcycles.