Princeton S* Network Systems

Today, I am going to talk about a system called SSDAlloc, a hybrid RAM/SSD memory manager, that I have been working on over the past year and a half or so, jointly with my adviser Vivek Pai. The post is more of a research report briefing. I’ll first talk about what motivated us to explore this area and then delve into the technical jargon.

I will start with describing what motivated us to use SSD as program memory and then I will describe why using SSD as a swap space is a bad idea. After that, I will describe … Continue Reading

Oct 2009 issue of the SIGCOMM CCR has an editorial by Kentaro Toyama and me where we ask the question if technologies for developing regions be considered a core area of computer science research? It is relatively easy to argue that technology can help improve the lives of the poorest billion people on the planet. But, is it research? More specifically, is it computer science research? This editorial stems out of our discussions at the CCC Workshop on Global Development. Keshav asked us to merge our, somewhat opposing, views into an editorial. You can read it here. … Continue Reading

[Today we'll be having a guest post by Anirudh Badam, a PhD student in the larger Network Systems Group at Princeton, related to systems research for developing regions.  The work he'll be talking about was recently named one of Technology Review's Top 10 Emerging Technologies for 2009.  -- Mike]

To provide Internet connectivity in the developing world is a daunting task, with problems pertaining to a high cost of bandwidth, ill-provisioned equipment and power, scarcity of on-site expertise, and adverse environmental conditions. Most common way to offset bandwidth cost/consumption is to deploy high-performance web proxy … Continue Reading

The call for papers for the 3rd Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions (NSDR) was announced today. NSDR 2009 will be held with ACM SOSP this year at Big Sky, Montana. Direct all whining about the location to the SOSP organizers please!

I thought I’d share a little history of NSDR on this blog. Research in technologies for developing regions has been going on for a while. For example, the TIER group at Berkeley started in 2003. However, this area (often dubbed as ICTD) lacked a sense of community with no specialized workshops/conferences.

In 2006, I was attending SenSys at … Continue Reading