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04/19/23
Research is a Job!
You need to be responsible You cannot cook your own results
Research should aim to make impact Not just papers
Research pays RAs ---- sorry, pay is a little too low Professor---pay reasonable Research scientist in a research lab Patent commercialized …
04/19/23
Research > a Job
What are the special characteristics demanded in research? Hint: what is demanded in playing a computer game? Your curiosity Your passion Your focus Your patience
May take 2-3 years Your obsess (your persistence)
Sometimes it does not work Rejections (10-20% acceptance rate)
Do you have all?
04/19/23
A table to relieve your stress
Enjoy yourself Not Enjoy yourself
Succeed(getting tenure, promotion, fame, etc)
Great! Not too bad (at least you succeed!)
Not succeed Not too bad(at least you enjoy youself)
BAD!!!!
To avoid the only bad combination, you should just enjoy yourself! Because this is under your control, whether succeed or not in somedegree also depends on others’ subjective evaluation!
04/19/23
Selecting Fun Research Areas
Match your interest/passionCommon mistakes
Limit yourself only within your comfortable zone Something unknown must be fun Consider only the ultimate research goal but
ignoreResearch realityResearch methodologyYou need to enjoy the journey
Consider only job opportunities Follow the trend --- hot areas
04/19/23
Adventurous in Your Research
Research is to find out the unknownAdventure in research
Propose new (maybe weird) solutions Jump into a new area unknown to you
Adventurous in research is fun Not bored You can bring a fresh air into a direction Likely to yield unexpected results
Your start a new direction!
04/19/23
My Own Experience
1992-1993: Database (Peking Univ) 1993-1994: Mathematics & Internal medicine
( Univ. of Virginia) 1994-1995: Computational biology (Princeton) 1995-1999: Distributed systems (Princeton) 1999-2002: Storage Systems (NEC Lab) 2002-Now: Software reliability, Energy
management (UIUC) Future: ?????
04/19/23
Problem-Driven Research
Identifying problems is more important than finding solutions
Define the boundaries of your problem carefully “Nobody will be impressed if you set the bar
too low and jump over it. Nobody will be impressed if you set the bar too high and don’t jump over it.” (Dave Redell)
Don’t try to “solve the world” or “boil the ocean”.
04/19/23
Picking Fun Research Problems
Criteria (agree with Lui & previous speakers) Exciting and interesting area Important problems in area Activities suitable to you (theory vs systems)
Take time to understand the problem Catch up background Get your own insights Hands-on: repeating the most recent,
authoritative work in this direction to understand the limitations from YOUR own perspective!
04/19/23
Defining the Solution
Make the problem concrete Start with particulars, then generalize
Know what makes the problem hard “Why couldn’t you just...”
Identify the standard of success How will you know when you are done? How to distinguish a good solution from a less-
good solution?
04/19/23
Looking for Solutions
Don’t limit to your comfortable zone
Broaden your eyes Talk with researchers from other
fields Attend talks in other fields
Don’t let fear of failure stop you
04/19/23
My Own “Gutsy” Solutions Pushing bug detection support into
hardware Attended Ravi Iyer’s class at UIUC Attended Darko Marinov’s class at UIUC
Combining data mining into compiler’s program analysis Attended Jiawei’s data mining class
Combining NLP into program analysis analysis Reading some textbook
04/19/23
Conduct Research in a Fun Way
Feasibility analysis Find out the potential in a quick way
Talk with other people Get feedback
Divide and Conquer See progress along the way
Be proud of your ideas!
04/19/23
Team Research is More Fun
Team discussion is stimulating You handle the up-and-downs
together Less pressure
Work party
Who likes to play games in a team? Internet games Poker
04/19/23
Eight Ways to Destroy the Fun of Team Research?
Fight for credits/author orderNot supportiveOver-defensiveCommand each otherNo communicationBlame each otherPassive waiting for tasksNo compromise
04/19/23
Tell Your Fun Findings to Others
Write a paperPublish it at
workshops/conferencesPresent it at a conference
04/19/23
Writing is Fun
Writing helps you refine ideas That’s why writing should be done in
parallel with the design, implementation and experiments
Writing helps you communicate ideas In most cases you will find out that you,
your teammates and your adviser have totally different views of the project (the idea, etc)
04/19/23
Add Fun Analogies in your Presentation
Explain boring technical things in an easy-to-understand manner Demonstrate your key insights
Make your talk more lively Throw jokes
04/19/23
Multi-level Server Cache Hierarchy
Database ServersFile Servers
Database ClientsFile Clients
Storage Servers
…
(4GB – 32GB) (1GB – 64GB)
NetworkNetwor
k
Storage Server Cache
Database Server Cache
Client Cache
(64MB – 128MB) << ~No need for inclusion property
04/19/23
Multi-level Server Caching
misses
Least Recently Used (LRU)
LRU?Database or
File server
Cache
Storage server
Cache
in cache?accesses
hits
Database Servers Storage Systems
(Lower level)File Servers(Higher level)
04/19/23
Analogy: Storage Box (Basement)
Assumption for analogy: item = boxQuestion: do you keep the box? If you have a basement, you can keep all the
boxes
Basement(lower-level)
Living room
(higher-level)
pizzaDELL
Traditional Client-Server Cache Hierarchy
04/19/23
Analogy: Storage Box (Closet)
If you just have a closet, you may keep only the box for your holiday decorations!
Closet(lower-level)
Living room
(higher-level)
Database-Storage Server Cache Hierarchy
hot accesscold access
hot miss
04/19/23
But If You Use LRU for Your Closet…
Your closet will be full of garbage!
Basement(lower-level)
Living room
(higher-level)
pizza
04/19/23
Atomicity Violation Bugs
Programmers want atomicity They assume some code regions are
‘atomic’ Lock/transaction are ways to ensure
atomicity Incorrect implementation causes
atomicity violations
04/19/23
Challenges of Atomicity Violation Detection
program BUG!
Infer programmer’s atomicity
intention
Detect violation to
the atomicity intention
How?How?
How to represent programmers atomicity intention?
04/19/23
An Analogy ---Don’t Disturb Assumption:
I work on some tasks everyday and some are repetitive
Preparing lectures Writing proposal Playing computer games Thinking or day-dreaming…
Some tasks cannot be interrupted (e.g. playing games)
I don’t tell students explicitly about what can or cannot be interrupted----too embarrassing…
Question: Can my students automatically figure out what tasks
can be interrupted?
04/19/23
Infer Professor’s “Atomicity” Desire
Finding Clues: When a task is interrupted unwillingly, the professor is a little mad, dis-oriented and cannot wait to get backInfer this task needs to be “atomic”
Otherwise, happy to be interrupted
04/19/23
Research Impacts
Papers on top conferences Best paper award---even better
Visibility Discussed in other institutes’ seminars Other people know about your work
Inspire other research projects # of Citations
Start a new research directionUsed in real systems