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Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

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Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#71

Post by pjc50 »

geofft wrote: post #35

"What happened" was two-fold: 1. Starting especially a few years before 2000 but continuing today, the software industry is quite profitable, pays well, and has lots of openings, while the a academic job market in systems research continues to pay poorly and has much more limited openings. So if you want to do systems software research while also having an enjoyable quality of life, you might as well go to a company…

> more interesting research environments generally are beyond the scale of academia

I think the real impairment to OS research is deployment. If your idea isn't compatible with one of the existing OSs, in such a way that it can run a web browser, then nobody's going to use it. Heck, even Windows Phone couldn't get adoption. OS ideas that require people to completely rewrite applications and interaction paradigms are non-starters no matter what benefits they offer - unless they can fulfil a need that can't be fulfilled any other way. So quite a lot of work goes into bypassing the OS entirely for hardware-specific single-program networking applications, and everyone else has to keep with their existing paradigms.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#72

Post by naasking »

wayoutthere wrote: post #34

This article predates it, but OS X (particularly after it mutated into iOS) represents probably the biggest source of systems innovation in the two decades after this article. Apple is very secretive, so their systems research often isn’t known outside the company until it’s actually going into a product. OS X was modern for its time, but where they’ve really pushed the envelope is with iOS. They can simply move fast…

> This article predates it, but OS X (particularly after it mutated into iOS) represents probably the biggest source of systems innovation in the two decades after this article

There was almost nothing innovative about OS X, even when it came out. It was just packaged and marketed very well. Objectice-C and NeXTSTEP was a user land improvement over typical C user lands, but that's not saying much.

> OS X was modern for its time

It really wasn't. The Mach "microkernel" was from outdated 80s research. It's bloated, slow and inflexible compared to the state of the art at the time.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#73

Post by jascii »

__jal wrote: post #61
geofft wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a wild misunderstanding of how academic research works to say that the first demonstration of a concept is equal to all further work on a concept. It is like saying that the Human Genome Project isn't recent work because the structure of DNA was discovered in 1953.

This is very common thinking - people seem to equate the first discussion of a concept with "discovery" with "the important stuff". If that line of thought were consistent, it would credit Babbage, or maybe Turing, as the last computer scientist to do something useful.

I would say there is a difference between development that significantly change the way we look at things and adapting known principals to changing demands.. Where exactly that boundary lays is, I admit, murky at best.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#74

Post by mateo411 »

sdenton4 wrote: post #70
__jal wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very common thinking - people seem to equate the first discussion of a concept with "discovery" with "the important stuff". If that line of thought were consistent, it would credit Babbage, or maybe Turing, as the last computer scientist to do something useful.

And machine learning is still stuck in the sixties...

It's stuck in the 1760s with the publication of Bayes Theorem.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#75

Post by naasking »

kllrnohj wrote: post #57
wayoutthere wrote: post #34

This article predates it, but OS X (particularly after it mutated into iOS) represents probably the biggest source of systems innovation in the two decades after this article. Apple is very secretive, so their systems research often isn’t known outside the company until it’s actually going into a product. OS X was modern for its time, but where they’ve really pushed the envelope is with iOS. They can simply move fast…

At launch Android was way more innovative at a systems level with per-application UID sand-boxing & a permission system and system-integration capabilities (broadcasts, services, intents, etc...) iOS was innovative at a UI/UX level, definitely. But I can't really think of anything they did at a systems level that was at all innovative?

Android didn't innovate those. Per-application sandboxing was the default in capability systems since the 60s, and became more widely deployed in the OLPC Bitfrost security model, and even had a deployment in HP labs' Polaris Windows NT-based environment for virus safe computing. These two projects informed the early Android security model IIRC.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#76

Post by theamk »

pjc50 wrote: post #71
geofft wrote: post #35

"What happened" was two-fold: 1. Starting especially a few years before 2000 but continuing today, the software industry is quite profitable, pays well, and has lots of openings, while the a academic job market in systems research continues to pay poorly and has much more limited openings. So if you want to do systems software research while also having an enjoyable quality of life, you might as well go to a company…

> more interesting research environments generally are beyond the scale of academia I think the real impairment to OS research is deployment. If your idea isn't compatible with one of the existing OSs, in such a way that it can run a web browser, then nobody's going to use it. Heck, even Windows Phone couldn't get adoption. OS ideas that require people to completely rewrite applications and interaction paradigms are…

It's important to remember that consumer-facing apps is just a part of the market; and even with consumer-facing apps, the user interface is often only a small part of it.

Even totally plain-looking device could be full of innovative research: a network router which uses completely new kernel. A new network protocol or a compression algorithm. New programming language. Automatic verification and/or fuzzing tools. A network of internet of things devices which share no code with any of the existing OSs.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#77

Post by pjc50 »

theamk wrote: post #76
pjc50 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more interesting research environments generally are beyond the scale of academia I think the real impairment to OS research is deployment. If your idea isn't compatible with one of the existing OSs, in such a way that it can run a web browser, then nobody's going to use it. Heck, even Windows Phone couldn't get adoption. OS ideas that require people to completely rewrite applications and interaction paradigms are…

It's important to remember that consumer-facing apps is just a part of the market; and even with consumer-facing apps, the user interface is often only a small part of it. Even totally plain-looking device could be full of innovative research: a network router which uses completely new kernel. A new network protocol or a compression algorithm. New programming language. Automatic verification and/or fuzzing tools. A n…

> Even totally plain-looking device could be full of innovative research: a network router which uses completely new kernel.

True. Although all those kinds of devices tend to prefer "free" over "innovative", and to keep the OS layer as thin as possible.

> A new network protocol or a compression algorithm. New programming language. Automatic verification and/or fuzzing tools.

To me those aren't really systems software, but that may be a matter of opinion?

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#79

Post by CalChris »

jascii wrote: post #20
cperciva wrote: post #7

Virtualization. Capabilities. Kernel-bypass networking. Static code analysis. Verified-pointer microarchitectures. Coverage-guided fuzzing. Systems software research has come a long way since 2000.

Virtualization: See VMS (1977) Kernel-bypass networking: See microkernels (1967) Need I go on?

VMS? See IBM System/360 in 1967.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#80

Post by feanaro »

jascii wrote: post #53
feanaro wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, please do demonstrate an ancient source of coverage-guided fuzzing, I would be very interested in that.

I think you could make a point that it would be a practical implementation of the "Infinite Monkey Theorem" made practical by extension of Moore's law.. I think the original author expresses disappointment in the lack of fundamental new developments in system research and he has a point. Then again the wheel hasn't changed much in recent history either..

I suspect you're not very familiar with modern fuzzing research because improvements in this area are definitely not simply a manifestation of Moore's law. Many clever and rather fundamental advancements have been invented and implemented here; for instance, the combination of symbolic execution with concrete execution known as concolic testing.
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