Life and Career Development: a Perspective from a Chinese

Scholar

Haibo ChenShanghai Jiao Tong University

http://ipads.se.sjtu.edu.cn/haibo_chen

Life and Career Development: a Perspective from a Chinese

Scholar

Haibo ChenShanghai Jiao Tong University

http://ipads.se.sjtu.edu.cn/haibo_chen

Outline

• Self-introduction

• Growing with the Academic Community

• Experiences in Academia and Industry • Interaction b/w Academia and Industry• Mind the Gap: Academia vs. Industry• Some Experiences

Self-introduction• Ph.D, Jan 2009 from Fudan University• Assistant Professor at Fudan since April 2009.• Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University since

December 2011• Research group: Institute of Parallel and Distributed

Systems (IPADS): http://ipads.se.sjtu.edu.cn• Director and Chief Scientist for OS since

December 2016 (sabbatical position)• Operating System Kernel Lab@Huawei

• Research Area• Computer systems in general: OS, Virtualization, In-

memory computing systems, system security, etc.

Grow with the Community: Engagement w/ChinaSys and APSys

AsiaSys

APSys ChinaSys

9 Years Ago (Nov. 2008)

APSys: Asia-pacific Workshop on Systems• Started from 2010

• 2010 at Indian: GC: Roma Kolta, PC Chair: Lidong• 2011 at Shanghai: GC: ZZ and I, PC Chair: YY and Sue Moon• 2012 at Korea: GC: Sue Moon, PC Chair: Satya• 2013 at Singapore: GC: Ben Leong, PC Chair: Junfeng and ZZ• 2014 at Beijing: GC: Yungang and Wenguang, PC Chair: Lorenzo

and I• 2015 at Japan: GC: Kenji Kono, PC Chair: Robbert and Kyoungsoo• 2016 at HongKong China, GC: Heming and Francis, PC Chair: Sorav

and Lin• 2017 at Mumbai, India, GC: Puru, PC Chair: Prashant and Lintao

The Story of ChinaSys• Online discussion began during organizing APSys 2011 (prior

code name: DeepSea)• Initial idea by ZZ, and make it real together with Wenguang, Lidong

and Haibo• Founding discussion right after the banquet of APSys

• ZZ, Wenguang, Binyu, Xiaofei, Yingwei, Yinhe, Yu, Yungang, Xiaolin, Haibo, etc…

• Inaugural workshop: Chair: Wenguang, Shenzhen after CNCC• 2nd: Chair: Haibo, Hangzhou, 3rd: Chair: Xiaofei, Wuhan• 4th: Chair: Yungang&Yinhe, Beijing, 5th: Chair: Yu, Suzhou• 6th: Chair: Li, Changsha, 7th: Chair: Yingwei, Shenzhe• 8th: Chair: Zhibin, Xiamen, 9th: Chair: Haibo/Weihua, Shanghai• 10th: Chair: Xiaofei, Wuhan, 11th: Chair: Yungang, Shanghai

BecomesthethirdSIGOPSchaptersinceAugust2015

Original Goal• Form a “club” with faculties from several research groups,

invitation only. • The faculties are the young working horses, instead of already

established.• Every half year, one of the club member will be the host of the

1day event. • Faculties take their senior students, and MSRA research team (in

most cases the entire team) will join for a one day retreat.• Opportunistically, we will invite one external senior

researchers(not necessarily from any of the members).• The goal is brainstorm and plan on works that will push this small

community to reach for an ambitious and yet achievable milestones.

• For the system discipline, it would something likeSOSP/OSDI/ASPLOS papers. Ideally, this is to promote collaboration among the members

We Are Growing and Stronger Since!• Numerous papers published in top systems conferences like

SOSP/OSDI, EuroSys, Usenix ATC, and top architecture conferences like ISCA, MICRO, HPCA, ASPLOS

• 2015 (Incomplete)• 1/30 SOSP paper• 3/32 EuroSys papers (1 best award)• 5/47 ATC papers• 3/23 PPoPP papers• 5/58 ISCA papers• 2/48 ASPLOS papers• Others: 2/29 MobiSys, 2/60 Usenix Security,

• Several best paper awards/nominee: ASPLOS, MICRO, HPCA, EuroSys, APSys

Community Services: Help You, Help Me!• 2017 ACM SOSP General Chair (w/ Lidong

Zhou@MSR)

• ACM APSys Steering Committee Chair (w/ Lorenzo Alvisi@Cornell)

• ChinaSys Co-founder (2011), ACM SIGOPS ChinaSys Vice Chair (2015)

• PC: SOSP, EuroSys, Usenix ATC, ISCA, ASPLOS, Oakland, PPoPP, CCS

• Associate Editor: ACM Transactions on Storage

Outline

• Self-introduction

• Growing with the Academic Community

• Experiences in Academia and Industry • Interaction b/w Academia and Industry• Mind the Gap: Academia vs. Industry• Some Experiences

Academia vs. Industry

Academia: Innovation & Incubation

Industry: Platform & Product

Difference b/w Academia and IndustryPaper (+prototype) vs. Product

P2P vs. Hierarchical

Hypothesis-oriented vs. market-driven

Free vs. well-organized

Scientific insights vs. market insights

Difference b/w Academia and IndustryTime constraint: paper deadline vs. time to market

Impact: knowledge vs. product

Persistent vs. fast changing

Communication/interpersonal skills

Mind the Gap: Be Careful of Flexibility

Webuildstuffs withflexibility

Reinventawheel! Inventanirrelevantwheel!

Mind the Gap: Eco-system Matters

• It is usually hard to destroy an existing eco-system

• High risk research: find chances for a revolution

• Low risk research: fix critical issues when evolving existing eco-system

• Key: needs an evolutionary path

Mind the Gap: Last Mile is Really Long• Belief: I build a good system with

innovative ideas, industry will definitely adopt it into its product

• Reality: industry cares a lot on the maturity of a system due to pressure on TTM, you usually have some competitors

• Suggestion: do last mile work yourself if you really want to push work into industry

Mind the Gap: Last Mile is Really Long• A long way to go from a research prototype to

a product• A research paper only finish ~1/10 of the journey

• Lots of traps ahead from research prototype to a product• Compatibility issues• Reliability issues• Deployment efforts• Dirty work to hacking

• Need a strong incentive to do so: 10-100X performance improvement, a revolutionizing security foundation

Mind the Gap: Complexity

• Computer systems are already very complex

• Academia: usually needs to make some simplified assumptions to conduct research

• Industry: 10+X complexity when applying a research idea back

Tip: Gaining Insight on the Technical Trend• Make sure it aligns with trend with industry

• Industry: 1-2 years ahead for product line, 2-5 years ahead for research lab

• Academia: 3-10+ years ahead

• Constraints: Time to Market

22

Tip: A Typical Way of Research：Incommensurate Scaling

As a system increases in size or speed, not all parts of it (&human factors) follow the same scaling rules

-- Saltzer & Kaashoek

X10million=Key:skeletalsystem

Tip: Incommensurate Scaling

Examples:Memorywall:CPUspeedincreasesfasterMulticorescalability:#coreincreasesfasterMobilesecurity:securitynotmatchopeninfrastructureIn-memorycomputing:dataaccess>1,000Xfaster

As a system increases in size or speed, not all parts of it (and human factors) follow the same scaling rules (Saltzer and Kaashoek )

But the Gap Considered Useful

• A gap helps distinguish academia and industry

• Academia: cutting-edge research with great flexibility

• Industry: comprehensive full solution, customer-oriented

Summary

• Grow with the community: help you, help me!

• From academia to industry• Mind the gap• Cope with fast changing world

Thanks