Page type: faculty

Kenneth P. Birman;Kenneth P. Birman;Professor;PhD Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1981;My research is concerned with fault-tolerant distributed computing and;operating systems. My focus is on using a distributed programming model;based upon virtual synchronous process groups to solve such problems as;managing replicated data, coordinating actions in a distributed setting,;and performing dynamic reconfiguration. This is done in a way that;provides fault-tolerance, although it is limited to certain classes of;reasonably benign failures.;My effort has a theoretical and a practical side. The practical work;started in 1985, when we developed a computing system called the Isis;Toolkit. Isis, with software tools to support virtual synchrony and;fault-tolerance, became widely popular. We are now developing a new;system, Horus, which is intended to be more flexible than Isis and which;addresses issues such as real-time communication and security.;The most important feature of Horus is its extensive use of layering, which;permits it to be reconfigured for special purposes. The basic idea is that;Horus users should pay only for features that they actually use but should;have available a very broad collection of options. Horus also seeks;leverage from the emergence of ATM network technology and from;communication techniques such as Active Messages, which originated in work;on parallel supercomputers. Horus embodies an advanced security;technology, developed by graduate students Mike Reiter and David Cooper,;which is unusual in combining security, privacy, and high availability in a;single package.;On the more fundamental side of the effort, the Horus group is looking at;techniques for specifying and proving properties of process-group;structured systems. We are using the ML language to develop executable;�reference implementations�� of the major Horus layers, with the goal of;using Constable�s Nuprl system to prove that the latter correctly;implements the former. We are also studying extensions of the virtual;synchrony model, notably in work by Roy Friedman on adding real-time;guarantees to Horus and in work by Mark Hayden on support for probabilistic;broadcast primitives and programming tools.;Horus is very much a collaboration. The architecture and development side;of the effort is headed by Dr. Robbert van Renesse, Werner Vogels and Roy;Friedman. Six graduate students are working on aspects of the system,;including the development of object-oriented programming tools for;multimedia communication applications, security and privacy, high-speed;protocols that exploit ATM, and other problems. We are also collaborating;within the department, notably with Thorsten von Eicken and Brian Smith.;University Activities;Chair, Engineering Policy Committee;Acting Head, Computer Science Department Master of Engineering Program;Member, Computer Science Department Faculty Recruiting Committee;Member, Cornell Academic Leadership Committee;Professional Activities;Editor in Chief, ACM Transactions on Computing Systems;Chief Scientist, Isis Distributed Systems, Inc.;Member: ISAT study group on Robustness of Critical Elements of the; National Information Infrastructure.;Publications;The process group approach to reliable distributed computing. Communications; of the ACM 36, 12 (December 1993), 37-53.;Integrating runtime consistency models for distributed computing. Journal of; Parallel and Distributed Computing 23, (Nov. 1994), 158-176.;Reliable distributed computing using the Isis toolkit. (eds. K.P. Birman; and R. van Renesse) IEEE Computer Society Press (1994), Los Alamitos,; California.;Reliability through consistency. IEEE Software 12, 3 (May 1995), 29-41; (with B. Glade).;Distributed Software; Horus system.;Return to:;; 1994-1995 Annual Report Home Page;; Departmental Home Page;If you have questions or comments please contact:;www@cs.cornell.edu.;Last modified: 24 November 1995 by Denise Moore;(denise@cs.cornell.edu).;