Financial trading venues and trading systems operate so quickly and rely on clocks so deeply that events like the one noted in this FINRA report
Read moreData base design criteria: ease of use
Regarding ease-of-use, it’s often struck me when reviewing data systems papers that the evaluation sections are full of performance and correctness criteria, but only rarely
Read moreDistributed consensus and network reliability
All of the distributed consensus algorithms I have been reviewing recently (Paxos, Raft, Zab, Chang Maxemchuck, Viewstamped, … ) are based on a number of
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The replicated state machine method of fault tolerance from 1980s
The first time I saw this method was when I went to work for Parallel Computer Systems, , later called Auragen, in the famous tech startup
Read morecircularity problems in distributed consensus
Distributed consensus involves organizing a collection of independent agents – processes or network sites – to agree on some value or sequence of values. Many
Read morestate equations in practice
When people think of mathematical models of state for programs and other computer systems, it’s natural and conventional to consider state as a map
Read moreState equations
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Read moreCutting and pasting about Kodak’s demise
This graph from Peter Diamandis about how Kodak entered the sinkhole is kind of amazing. Diamandis explains Kodak’s failure to swerve in what is I think
Read moreSynchronous processors
Imagine a processor with no interrupts. We can do a lot better and get rid of most exceptions (e.g. system calls, page faults etc.), most
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