OSDI '94 Night Panel:
On the Insularity of Operating Systems Research


Moderator: Willy Zwaenepoel (Rice University)

Andrew Tannenbaum (Vrije Universiteit)
Gregory Andrews (University of Arizona)
Michael Blasgen (IBM Storage System Division)
Paul Leach (Microsoft)
Rob Pike (AT&T)

Abstract

Nearly ten years ago, Domenico Ferrari wrote a paper "On the Insularity of Performance Evaluation," in which he took the SIGMETRICS community to task for operating in isolation from mainstream computer systems areas. This panel will explore and debate the extent to which this and related issues, such as failure to address end-user concerns, are a problem for current OS research.

Audio (25.6MB, 53 minutes.)
(Unfortunately, the recording started late, and so we are missing Andy Tannenbaum's entire opening statement and a small part of Greg Andrew's. Andy maintained that OS researchers are not insular, for example, compared to astrophysicists.)