World Record for Data Sorting / Slashdot

Congratulations to the entire data sorting crew over in computer science. They broke a world record when they broke a 60-second-sort terabyte barrier. They also tied another world record at the Sort Benchmark competition. And now their hard work is getting the attention of the inquisitive eyeballs on Slashdot.

Data Sorting World Record Falls

It's hard to imagine sorting a terabyte of data in one minute...but that's what computer scientists at the Jacobs School did...and for their efforts, they got themselves a world record at the Sort Benchmark competition. (Check out the full Sort Benchmark / UC San Diego press release.) But before you go, consider the fact that data sorting is a big deal, for a variety of reasons. Facebook ads and Amazon product suggestions are generated thanks to heavy duty data sorting techniques. Companies across the world are turning to data sorting to sift through the mountains of potentially relevant data that are piling up...data analytics in action.

The lead computer science graduate student on the project, Alex Rasmussen (pictured below), explained to me during our photo shoot in a Calit2 server room, that data sorting is a good way to flex a whole bunch of computing / networking / systems muscles. He explained it this way:

“Sorting is also an interesting proxy for a whole bunch of other data processing problems. Generally, sorting is a great way to measure how fast you can read a lot of data off a set of disks, do some basic processing on it, shuffle it around a network and write it to another set of disks,” explained Rasmussen. “Sorting puts a lot of stress on the entire input/output subsystem, from the hard drives and the networking hardware to the operating system and application software.”

For anyone following along, this is the follow up to the 10,318 seconds post.

Car Computer Systems Vulnerability / FAQ

Check out the extensive FAQ for the new research results on automotive security led by computer science professor Stefan Savage from UC San Diego and computer science professor Tadayoshi Kohno from the University of Washington.

The FAQ is at www.autosec.org More info below.

This research is tied to The Center for Automotive Embedded Systems Security (CAESS), which is a partnership between researchers, including Savage and Kohno, at the University of California San Diego and the University of Washington.

Our research mission is to help ensure the security, privacy, and safety of future automotive embedded systems.

May 14, 2010: We'll be presenting our paper "Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile" at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in Oakland, CA on May 19^th.

Check out related stories in the media:

New York Times: "Cars’ Computer Systems Called at Risk to Hackers"

New Scientist: "Modern cars vulnerable to malicious hacks"

Center for Networked Systems (CNS)

The Center for Networked Systems (CNS) at UCSD has a new brochure which you can check out online.

The scribblings on the whiteboard on the back page are related to professor Joe Pasquale's work on long-running replicated systems.

Amin Vahdat, a UCSD computer science professor is the current CNS Director. I have pasted his director's message below:

The last decade has been witness to exponential
growth in the speed and coverage of digital communication
networks. We are now at an inflection
point in the utility of the now global communication
network. Moving forward, the reach of the
network will enable a new class of applications
and opportunities to collaborate and communicate.
With these opportunities come a number of
challenges. As networked applications and
services permeate our daily experience, we will
require new techniques to improve the security of
our data and to manage scale and complexity of
the millions of compute and communication
elements powering the global network.

At UCSD’s Center for Networked Systems (CNS),
we have assembled a world-class team of faculty
and students, performing cutting-edge research in
all areas of computer networks, from optical
interconnects and wireless sensor networks to
data center architectures and network security.
Our faculty are internationally recognized leaders
with a reputation for working on practical, highimpact
problems, while simultaneously performing
fundamental research to advance the state of the
art. Our students are highly sought after, regularly
securing top industrial and academic positions.

A significant differentiator at CNS is our culture of
industrial partnership. By working closely with our
member companies to define research efforts of
mutual interest, we are able to engage the top
companies in our field to both understand the
important problems facing real deployed communication
systems and to jointly work toward solutions.

Our students typically enjoy the opportunity to either
begin or continue collaborative research as
a part of our very successful summer internship
program. On a number of occasions, summer
internships have led to dissertation topics and
even impacted company practices or products.
We believe the revolution in communication networks
is just beginning. With the strength of our
students, our faculty, and our deep collaborations
with our industrial partners, UCSD’s Center for
Networked Systems will continue to be at the
forefront of these exciting times.

-Amin Vahdat, Director

Digital Dandelions Bloom in Japan

Digital dandelions are blooming at SIGCOMM 2007 in Kyoto, Japan. This paper is about creating random maps of the Internet that capture things like the interconnectivity characteristics of the actual Internet. One of the things they measure is "betweenness." Between you and me, I'm a big fan of "betweenness." You can read the press release or go to the actual SIGCOMM paper.