NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

 

Joint CS/ECE Distinguished Lecture Series in Systems and Architecture

 

 

Distributed Systems Go (Large Scale) Embedded

 

 

John A. Stankovic

BP America Professor and Chair of Computer Science Department

University of Virginia

 

 

Embedded systems are proliferating at an amazing rate. In 1998 only 2% of all processors were used for workstations; the rest as embedded processors. By 2002, we are approaching 100% of all processors being used in embedded systems. We are also seeing the development of large scale distributed systems of sensors, actuators, and cpus. The large scale and the direct linkage to the real world environment are challenging many of the basic assumptions underlying current distributed systems technology. In fact, many current distributed systems solutions are no longer applicable. We will discuss what assumptions are no longer valid and the impact of these changes on distributed systems technology. We will also present research details on several key research problems for these types of systems: how to control the aggregate performance of these large scale systems, how to perform real-time routing in a wireless sensor network (composed of "berkeley" motes), and how to compose embedded systems from domain specific components.

 

John Stankovic is a Fellow of both the IEEE and the ACM. Recently he won the IEEE Real-Time Systems Technical Committee's Award for Outstanding Technical Contributions and Leadership. Professor Stankovic also serves as Treasurer for the Board of Directors of the Computer Research Association. Before joining the University of Virginia, Professor Stankovic taught at the University of Massachusetts where he won an outstanding scholar award. He has also held visiting positions in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon University, at INRIA in France, and Scuola Superiore S. Anna in Pisa, Italy. He was the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Distributed and Parallel Systems and is a co-editor-in-chief for the Real-Time Systems Journal.  His research interests are in distributed computing, real-time systems, operating systems, and ad hoc networks for pervasive computing. Prof. Stankovic received his PhD from Brown University.

Thursday, May 16, 2002 - 4pm - Tech L211

Reception to follow in Tech B211