ellie@uunet.UU.NET (Ellie Young) (06/19/91)
Preliminary Announcement and Call for Papers
Usenix Mach Symposium
Doubletree Hotel
Monterey, CA
November 20-22, 1991
Background
----------
Mach has become a dynamic addition to the operating systems
marketplace. DARPA originally sponsored Mach development, and
continues to emphasize the use and growth of Mach. In the larger
research community, Mach is ever more widely used at many university
sites and industrial research labs. Versions of Mach have been
released commercially by Encore, NeXT, BBN and mt Xinu. The Open
Software Foundation chose Mach as the basis for its operating system
offering; now, OSF/1 is finding increasing acceptance as computer
vendors ready products derived from it.
Recent developments have demonstrated the feasibility of Mach 3.0, the
combination of a pure Mach kernel with single or multiple servers
emulating the features of traditional operating systems. Performance
of Mach 3.0 has begun to approach or exceed that of Mach 2.5. Workers
outside of the CMU community have begun to use Mach 3.0 as the basis
for their projects. In short, acceptance of Mach has come about in an
astonishingly brief time.
Activity in this field has been sufficiently wide-spread that,
little more than a year after the first Usenix Mach workshop, the Usenix
Association is pleased to sponsor an expanded Mach symposium to bring
together researchers, engineers, vendors and users of Mach systems. We
will encourage discussion of all past and present Mach-related research,
development, production and applications activities.
Symposium Overview
------------------
The symposium will be spread over three days. The first day will be
devoted to two half-day tutorials on advanced programming for Mach
3.0. The following two days will concentrate on presentation of
refereed papers on current and historical Mach-related work. Long
breaks between presentations provide ample opportunity for informal
discussion. Some time will be available for descriptions of work in
progress.
Tutorials
---------
Richard Draves Writing a Multi-Threaded Mach 3.0 Server
David Black Writing an External Memory Manager
Richard Draves will lead a tutorial analyzing the process of writing a
multi-threaded server, with particular attention paid to the
complexities of using Mach IPC. During the course of his doctoral
studies at Carnegie-Mellon University, Rich rewrote Mach 3.0 IPC
to solve problems that became apparent with Mach 2.5 servers.
David Black will demonstrate how to create an external memory manager;
discussion will center on the intricacies of developing an efficient
(and well-behaved!) external manager. David, currently of the Open
Software Foundation, received his doctorate from Carnegie-Mellon for
his contributions to Mach.
These tutorials are being developed precisely for this Usenix Mach symposium.
They will explore concepts and rationale as well as real examples. They are
oriented towards programmers who already have some familiarity with
using Mach IPC and VM. Each tutorial is a half-day, so conference
attendees may take part in both. The tutorials will be
priced separately from the conference registration fee.
Submissions
-----------
Extended abstracts of 1500-2500 words (9000-15000 bytes or 3-5 pages)
should be sent to Alan Langerman at the address below (those submitting
hardcopy abstracts must send six copies). Shorter abstracts run a
significant risk of rejection as there will be little on which we can
base an opinion. Preference will be given to those submissions that
include an outline of the entire paper in addition to the extended
abstract. Authors must also supply an estimate of the length of the
full paper.
A good extended abstract will contain the following information in
one form or another:
Abstract 100-300 words (half a page)
included verbatim in the final paper
Introduction The problem; its importance; previous work
Solution Issues, decisions, tradeoffs, rationale.
Implementation details.
Evaluation Performance results; effort required;
lessons learned.
Conclusion
The extended abstract will allow us to analyze the content of your
proposed paper. This layout is not cast in concrete; just submit
enough material to convince the committee that they want to accept the
paper!
An outline lists the headings, major points and many minor points for
each section of the actual paper. The outline gives us an idea of the
form and style of your paper.
The submission package should include:
+ Your extended abstract
+ Outline of rest of paper, if at all possible
+ Cover letter, detailing
o Title of paper
o Authors
o Estimate of paper length
o Contact author (liaison to program committee)
o E-mail address and daytime phone number for contact author
o Optional home phone number
o Optional FAX number
o Surface mail address (required)
+ If you are submitting hardcopy, six copies of the submission
The submission should be sent electronically to me, alan@encore.com, or
by surface mail to me at the address listed below. I will not copy and
re-distribute FAXes.
All submissions will be acknowledged. Authors of approved abstracts
will be required to submit full-length papers (8-15 pages) approximately
five weeks after notification of acceptance.
Areas of interest include, but certainly are not limited to:
o Applications
o Mach 2.5 and earlier development
o Mach 3.0 monolithic server
o Mach 3.0 multi-server
o Problems with Mach 2.5 / Mach 3.0 features
o Multiprocessor or parallelization experiences
o Security
o Performance
o Productization
o Experiences with OSF/1
o Use of Mach subsystems in other operating system kernels
o Comparisons of Mach with other operating systems; e.g.,
Chorus, Sprite, Amoeba, V, and of course Unix
o Porting Mach to off-beat architectures
o Future work
Important dates:
Extended abstracts: July 19, 1991
Notification: August 23, 1991
Camera-ready, full papers: October 4, 1991
For further information about the symposium, contact the program chair:
Alan Langerman
Encore Computer Corporation
257 Cedar Hill Street
Marlborough, MA 01752
Voice: (508) 460-0500
FAX: (508) 485-0709
E-Mail: alan@encore.com
Program Committee
-----------------
Larry Allen, Open Software Foundation
Nawaf Bitar, Hewlett-Packard Company
Susan LoVerso, Encore Computer Corporation
Melinda Shore, Cornell University
Michael Young, Ph.D., Transarc
-----
Alan Langerman (alan@encore.com)
--
=========================== MODERATOR ==============================
Steve Stevenson {steve,fpst}@hubcap.clemson.edu
Department of Computer Science, comp.parallel
Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906 (803)656-5880.mabell