Source: http://www.sigmetrics.org/history_stories.shtml
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 02:29:23+00:00

Document:
The following facts, stories, and anecdotes have been compiled by Jennifer Harper at the University of Calgary, with assistance and encouragement from SIG Chair Carey Williamson. Most of the material is drawn from "the box" handed down from one SIG executive to another over the years, as well as the online versions of PER, which someone patiently digitally scanned and posted over a decade ago. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
To view stories about a particular era in the history of SIGMETRICS, just click on that row to expand its contents. Click again to collapse.
If you have other (printable!) stories that you would like to see here, please get in touch with your SIG Chair.
∞ The recent explosion in the use of two-way media allowing users to upload content (e.g. YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, Wikipedia, BitTorrent) and the concurrent rise of wireless technology has made performance evaluation an even more crucial issues. Improvements in performance may be measured in fractional percentages or microseconds, but when these improvements are applied to the movements of terabytes worth of data, they add up. It is likely that unless significant improvements are made to the physical infrastructure of the Internet, it will soon be unusable due to the sheer volume of information being moved at any given moment. Cloud-based services, power consumption, and green computing are also becoming prominent research topics. It's a good time to be a member of SIGMETRICS!
Quarterly newsletter "Performance Evaluation Review", which contains open-call research articles, themed issues on special topics, and abstracts from SIG-related workshops. PER is printed and mailed to members 4 times per year, with one of the issues dedicated to the annual SIGMETRICS conference proceedings.
∞ Throughout the 2000s, there was an increasing emphasis on the use of "metaprograms" to model hypothetical systems/networks/hardware, or simulate/emulate existing ones for the purposes of measuring speed, reliability, loss, etc. This opens up entirely new areas of performance analysis, since not only are the systems themselves being measured and analyzed, but the programs used to simulate these systems virtually are also subject to analysis.
∞ Performance measurement and evaluation has become an increasingly difficult subject, considering that performance is no longer simply a matter of how fast the job gets done, how much data can be stored, and how much bandwidth there is to work with. Security, reliability, resilience, and usability are also important measures of performance, and with the increasing complexity of both individual computers and networks and the fact that most users are only minimally computer literate, other factors apart from sheer power and capacity may take precedence in evaluating a given system.
∞ The First Workshop on Performance and Architecture of Web Servers (PAWS 2000) was held in conjunction with SIGMETRICS 2000 on June 17 and 18 in Santa Clara, CA.
∞ The First Workshop on Practical Aspects of Performance Analysis (PAPA 2002) was held in conjunction with SIGMETRICS 2002 on June 15 in Marina Del Rey, CA. It was jointly sponsored by SIGMETRICS and the Computer Measurement Group (CMG), with partial support from HP Labs. This workshop focused on how performance analysis techniques can help practitioners in the design and performance management of computer systems. SIGMETRICS member Mark Squillante is finally content that SIGMETRICS conferences are gender-neutral (MAMA and PAPA).
∞ In 2005, SIGMETRICS executive elections were held online for the first time!
∞ Also in 2005, in conjunction with SIGMETRICS 2005 in Banff, Canada, the First Workshop on Large Scale Network Interference (LSNI 2005) took place on June 6, 2005.
∞ The First Workshop on Hot Topics in METRICS (HotMetrics'08) was held in Annapolis, MD, on June 6th, 2008, in conjunction with SIGMETRICS 2008. For the first time, the SIGMETRICS 2008 program is 3 full days, with 36 papers presented in addition to workshop and poster papers.
∞ At SIGMETRICS 2009 in Seattle, WA, (June 15-19) the First GreenMetrics Workshop was held to discuss topics in performance evaluation, energy efficiency, and environmental sustainability.
∞ From PER v. 27 no. 3 (Dec. 1999): "The complexity of computer systems, networks and applications, as well as the advancements in computer technology, continue to grow at a rapid pace. Mathematical methods and analysis are playing an important role in research studies to investigate fundamental issues and tradeoffs at the core of real design and performance problems in order to impact the design and implementation of complex computer systems, networks and applications."
∞ In 1990, as reported in PER v. 17 no. 2 (August 1990), SIGMETRICS had about 2,000 members, and a budget surplus of $90,000 US (equivalent to completely funding 1.5 SIGMETRICS conferences).
∞ In 1990-91, the hot topic appeared to be benchmarking. Three issues of PER had extensive discussions of benchmarking in general, and the UnixWorld/Neal Nelson benchmark method in particular (specifically, whether it actually provided accurate results). The debate was quite heated.
∞ Editor Blaine Gaither indicates that PER is now able to accept submissions electronically, "directly from USENET" (PER v. 18 no. 2, 1990).
∞ At the SIGMETRICS/Performance 1992 conference in Newport, RI (June 1-5, 1992), SIGMETRICS members discussed the possibility of holding future conferences in Europe, whether to offer cheaper memberships to students, and whether to change the SIG's name to SIGPERF. Evidently, nobody was really interested in a name change.
∞ According to PER v. 20, no. 3, the membership of SIGMETRICS was approximately 1,800 as of March 1993, with most SIGMETRICS members also belonging to other ACM SIGs. The most prominent overlaps were with SIGOPS (41% of SIGMETRICS members also belonged to SIGOPS), SIGARCH (36%), SIGCOMM (30%), SIGSOFT (30%), SIGPLAN (26%), SIGMOD (20%), and SIGSIM (16%). These statistics are from June 1997, when SIGMETRICS had 1364 members.
∞ During the 1990s, membership remained stable, but didn't grow. The PER publication schedule also suffered, with only one or two issues a year (including SIGMETRICS proceedings) being released between 1994 and 1997.
∞ At the SIGMETRICS 1995 conference, held in conjunction with IFIP Performance 1995 from May 15-19 in Ottawa, ON, the organizers introduced a new type of session called "Hot Topics." These sessions were intended to provide a forum for more spontaneous, less formal presentation of a topic selected by a group of authors.
∞ 1996 marked the first year that papers could be submitted for SIGMETRICS electronically (!), as well as the first year that SIGMETRICS was held as part of a large, multi- conference event with the Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC) in Philadephia, PA, May 23-26. In addition, this was the first year that an award was presented the Best Integration of Systems and Theory, as well as an award for the Best Simulation Paper. The latter award was presented by ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (ToMACS).
∞ On May 1, 1999, the first Workshop on MAthematical performance Modeling and Analysis (MAMA '99) was held in Atlanta, GA, in conjunction with ACM SIGMETRICS '99 and FCRC '99. The workshop was sponsored by ACM SIGMETRICS with support from IBM Research. The workshop organizers sought to bring together researchers working on the mathematical, methodological and theoretical aspects of performance analysis, modeling and optimization.
∞ During the 1980s, the invention of the personal computer (and the subsequent steady drop in the cost of purchasing one) meant that increasing numbers of people had a computer at home for word processing, keeping track of home finances, playing games, or even communicating with other computers. The release of the Apple MacIntosh, with its user-friendly graphic interface, made personal computers even more popular and less intimidating.
∞ PER v. 9 no. 3 (Fall 1980) printed benchmarking results for a contemporary computer: "Digital Equipment Corporation's Datasystem 355 as configured for our tests consists of a PDP ii/34A central processor, 256K bytes of central memory (128K is standard), 10.4 megabytes of hard-disk storage, an eight-line multiplexer, a VT100 console terminal, and an LA180 line printer. Priced at $43,550 (three additional VT100 terminals would bring the price to $49,700), our benchmark tests revealed the following..."
∞ During the early-to-mid 1980s, sparsely-attended conferences and a drop in membership resulted in a drop in revenues. This led to cutbacks in the length and publication schedule of PER, as well as an increase in SIGMETRICS membership fees from $9 to $12.
∞ In 1985, the SIG Board of ACM voted to change the term of office for SIG officers from one year to two, with a possible two-year extension provided that 2/3 of the SIG's board members agreed.
∞ In 1986-87, SIGMETRICS faced a bit of a cash crunch owing to having to move the SIGMETRICS 1986 conference dates from August to May in order to accommodate IFIP Performance 1986, and consequently having to print two sets of SIGMETRICS proceedings in the same fiscal year. The 1986 fiscal year ended with SIGMETRICS having only $177 in the bank (see PER v. 14 no. 3-4). For the next few years, the PER publication schedule was cut to two or three issues per year instead of four.
∞ SIGMETRICS 1987 (May 11-14) was held in Banff, with the conference banquet at the Banff Springs Hotel. There are some very entertaining photos in PER v. 15 no. 2 (Aug 1987) here.
∞ The First National SIGME Symposium on Measurement and Evaluation was held February 26-28, 1973 in Palo Alto, California (General Chair: J.D. Madden; Program Chair: T.B. Pinkerton). Over 200 people attend. Tension arises between members whose main interest is in creating models of idealized systems and those who are more interested in evaluating existing systems. This tension never really goes away.
"In a recent comparison test, six computer manufacturers were asked to code a particular program loop to run as quickly as possible on their machine. Presumably conclusions about the merits of the machines were to be drawn from the resulting code."
"We have reduced the number of Instructions for the loop by an average of one instruction per machine, a 15% decrease. It appears that conclusions might more appropriately be drawn about manufacturers' software."
∞ SICME became SIGME (Special Interest Group on Measurement and Evaluation) on December 8 1972, following a successful mail-in petition campaign to convert prior to the Committee's first symposium. Apparently, 100 signatures were required for conversion, and over 135 were received before ACM headquarters stopped counting.
∞ At the 1972 FJCC, a decision is made to change the name of SIGME to SIGMETRICS.
∞ The first SIGMETRICS elections are held in the fall of 1973. There are now over 1,000 members, and the organization has a cash surplus of over $3,000 US.
∞ The first two issues of PER in 1974 are delayed due to materials being lost in the post (!). Editor J. C. Browne offers humble apology.
∞ Steady growth through the 1970s and continued tension between modelers and evaluators. There is also a certain degree of territorial conflict with other SIGs, notably SIGSIM, which also has a major focus on modeling.
∞ Publication of PER through the 1970s was irregular, with reasons for the delays ranging from postal (!) difficulties, lack of submissions, and the editor (Harold Joseph Highland) suffering from a heart attack.
∞ Proposed bylaws for SIGMETRICS are first printed in PER v. 8 no. 4 (Winter 1979-80), bringing SIGMETRICS bylaws in line with those of ACM.
∞ Also in this issue, the SIGMETRICS Chair, Gary Nutt, requests submissions from members and points out that the purpose of PER is to showcase works in progress in a timely manner. Despite this, for the next decade, members continue to send in publication quality (and size) articles, resulting in alternating backlogs and shortages of articles.
"to provide a means for the timely dissemination of relevant information about measurement and evaluation"
"to provide an arena for discussion between researchers engaged in developing methodologies and users seeking new or improved techniques for the analysis of computer systems"
"to focus scattered research efforts in a significant area which has not previously been well-represented"
∞ The first SICME newsletter, known as Performance Evaluation Review (PER), was published in March 1972.
∞ SICME had over 500 members by the publication of the second issue of PER. Over 40% of these SIG members were non-ACM members.

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