Rethinking Time in Distributed Systems

(November 11, 2009) Paul Borrill of REPLICUS Software Corporation discusses results from physics and other disciplines that investigate if and where hazards to the integrity of our information may exist due to current conceptions of time in computer science. Borrill focuses upon distributed systems, where scale, transmission rates and spatial distribution would most readily manifest anomalous behavior arising from such flaws.

Stanford University:
http://www.stanford.edu/

Stanford Engineering Everywhere:
http://see.stanford.edu/

Stanford Center for Professional Development:
http://scpd.stanford.edu/

Stanford University Channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/stanford

Category:

Education

Tags:

• science
• technology
• electrical engineering
• physics
• computer
• time
• distributed systems
• programming
• information storage
• scale
• transmission rate
• spatial distribution
• complexity
• software
• hardware
• simultaneity
• inertial system
• concurrency

[grunder20]

Giving time its partition, is one heck of an idea.

[agapitoflores001]

Nice one! I like it a lot. Super!

[saivenkat7]

My thought is the centralized notion of time or God observer view came into being as an approximation same as classical mechanics is an approximation .

Shavit and Herlihy won Godel Prize, not Turing award :)

[Nevyle]

would someone please remove the mind tortuting high pitched sound throughout the whole lecture ?

[L00NGB00W]

Thanks Stanford.

Hooray for the Technological Singularity!!!

This problem of concurrence will no doubt bring on the singularity that much faster. Making machines that can repair themselves is just one step away from machines that can redesign themselves.

If a machine as powerful or more so, than the human brain were put to the task of redesigning itself.... It would usher in an exponential growth of technology at faster and faster rates

We will have built IGod.

=D

I hope I live to see it!

[cmlburnett]

I had to jump to 1:40 for the presentation to start.

[ytubeanon]

the audio in this video reminds me of the star trek episode where kirk is subjected to a high-ptiched brainwashing torture device:

Dagger_of_the_Mind_(episode)

[mm1979dk]

It is unfair for a physicist to throw stones into computer science without doing homework.

Computer scietists are aware of the mentioned problems, they are! The neglected requirement in this talk is that the system should behave *predictably*. All others can be translated into this requirement.

The concurrency *is* being addressed through composition and non-determinism. See timed labeled transition systems, parallel composition, timed automata.

[michalhantl]

Are you kidding me with the hissing audio?

Is everybody oinvolved with the sound high pitch noise deaf?

Mym mom (40+) does not hear it but it splits ears here (24)!