XPost: cs.bboard, columbia.general.bboard 
 From: kaiser@news.cs.columbia.edu 
  
  Guest Lecturer 
 Joe Hellerstein, IBM 
  
 Feedback Control of Computing Systems 
  
 November 19, 2003 
  
 1:10-2:25pm 
  
 1024 MUDD 
  
 Abstract: 
  
 Feedback control is common in computing systems. Examples include scheduling 
 in operating systems, admission control in network routers, buffer 
 management in database management systems, and garbage collection in Java 
 Virtual Machines. Control theory is widely used in other engineering 
 disciplines to systematically design feedback control systems. Over the last 
 three years, researchers in industry and academia have found that simple 
 techniques in control theory can be surprisingly effective in practice in 
 computing systems, especially to design management schemes that are stable, 
 accurate, and fast acting. 
  
 This talk is a preview of a course that will be offered next Spring on the 
 application of control theory to computing systems. The course objectives 
 are for students to: 
  
 1.       learn a variety of feedback control techniques and understand their 
 theoretical foundations: 
  
 2.       gain hands-on experience with controller design and analysis; and 
  
 3.       gain awareness of promising research directions in the application 
 of control theory to computing systems. 
  
 Numerous computer science examples are used throughout, including an email 
 server and the Apache Web Server. The course focuses on techniques that we 
 have used at IBM, many of them in products. The emphasis is on linear, 
 deterministic, time-invariant systems, both single-input single-output and 
 multiple-input multiple-output. The required mathematical background is 
 quite modest. 
  
 Bio: 
  
 Joseph L Hellerstein is a research staff member and manager at the IBM 
 Thomas J Watson Research Center where he manages the Adaptive Systems 
 Department.  Dr.  Hellerstein received his PhD from the University of 
 California in Los Angeles.  Since then his research has addressed various 
 aspects of managing service levels, including: predictive detection, 
 automated diagnosis, expert systems, and the application of control theory 
 to resource management.  Dr.  Hellerstein has published approximately 80 
 papers and an Addison-Wesley book on expert systems.  He is currently 
 completing a book entitled "Feedback Control of Computing Systems" (to be 
 published by Wiley). 
  
  
  
 Prof. Gail Kaiser 
 Columbia University 
 Department of Computer Science 
 New York, NY 10027 
 kaiser@cs.columbia.edu 
  
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