What Theory for Transactional Memory?

The Transaction Memory paradigm is argued to be as easy to use as coarse-grained locking, and nearly as efficient on multi-core systems as hand-crafted, fine-grained locking. It is thus not surprising to see a large body of work dedicated to implementing the paradigm and exploring its limitations. Very little work has however been devoted to explore its theoretical ramifications. This workshop will be devoted to discussing those ramifications. It will be organized on the 22nd of September, in conjunction with DISC 2009.

Speakers will include:

• Hagit Attiya;
• Christof Fetzer;
• Tim Harris;
• Maurice Herlihy;
• Maged Michael;
• Mark Moir;
• Nir Shavit;
• Jan Vitek.
  

We will welcome students to also give talks. Graduate students who are interested in giving a talk should send a message to Vincent.Gramoli@epfl.ch by August 1st 2009, with a one page abstract of their research work.

Organizers: Rachid Guerraoui (EPFL) and Vincent Gramoli (EPFL and Univ. of Neuchâtel).

This workshop has a webpage.

Date: 22/9/2009

BFTW3: Why? When? Where? (Workshop on Theory and Practice of Byzantine Fault Tolerance)

The workshop gathers researchers from both theory and systems communities and aims at understanding why the impressive research activity in the area of Byzantine fault-tolerance is not yet instantiated in practice.  Has the moment for a wide deployment of BFT systems arrived, and if so, where BFT systems should be deployed in the first place?

Format: The workshop will consist of invited contributions. No published proceedings, the presentations may contain results that appeared or are going to appear elsewhere, work-in-progress reports, survey, and tutorials, as long as they are related to BFT, and, specifically, to the questions raised above.

Organizers: Petr Kuznetsov (TU Berlin/Deutsche Telekom Laboratories)  and Rodrigo Rodrigues (Max Planck Institute for Software Systems MPI-SWS)

Sponsors: Deutsche Telekom Laboratories.

This workshop has a webpage, that also contains the workshop program.
Date: 22/9/2009

Workshop on Reliability and Security in Wireless Networks

The 21st century heralds the beginning of the age of open airwaves. Over the last ten years, a plethora of new wireless applications have been developed and deployed to facilitate communication and to help people in their everyday lives. To a large extent, these applications rely on open airwaves, the unlicensed bands of spectrum, to accomplish their work.

However, the fact that the airwaves are open to all poses its own set of challenges that risk derailing the wireless revolution. The rapid growth of competing applications leads to a crowding of the airwaves, resulting in inadvertent interference among users.  And the shared, open spectrum verily invites malcontents and attackers that may wish to disrupt applications and to corrupt data. Thus, the problems of reliability and security in wireless networks have become increasingly critical.

The workshop will consist of a sequence of talks on reliability and security in wireless networks, focusing on two goals in mind: first, to disseminate cutting edge research on how to design robust wireless networks; and second, to develop new ideas on the future of wireless networking. Our long-term goal is to lay the groundwork for developing a new architecture for wireless network in which reliability and security are fundamental precepts.  In order to achieve these goals, lectures will cover a variety of topics, possibly including (but no limited to):

(a) Algorithmic techniques for building fault-tolerant wireless networks;
(b) Cryptographic techniques for building secure wireless networks;
(c) Verification and formal methods for analyzing the reliability and security of wireless networks; and
(d) Practical experiences designing and building reliable and secure wireless networks.

For further information, or for information regarding submissions, please e-mail Seth Gilbert (seth.gilbert@epfl.ch) and/or Dariusz Kowalski (D.Kowalski@liverpool.ac.uk ).

Organizers: Seth Gilbert and Dariusz Kowalski.

This workshop has a webpage.

Date: 22/9/2009

Workshop on Game Theoretic Aspects of Distributed Computing

In traditional Distributed Computing, the behavior of the system components (i.e., processors) is characterized a priori as either "good" or "bad", depending on whether they follow the prescribed protocol or not. In Game Theory, processors are assumed to be rational, that is, they act on their own self-interest and they do not have an a priori established behavior. In other words, the processors decide on how to act in an attempt to increase their own benefit (a quantified measure).

Game theory has long being considered in many fields, ranging from Economics to Law Enforcement and Voting Decision. With the evolution of the Internet, game theory has found many applications in networks, and in Distributed Computing in general. Such examples include Internet routing, resource/facility location and sharing, containment of viruses spreading, secret sharing, and web-based task computations.

The purpose of this workshop is to present recent works that consider distributed computing issues from a game-theoretic view and approach. The workshop is open to all DISC participants, and the main objective is to enable members of the Distributed Computing community (especially students and junior researchers) to realize the potential of "Game-theoretical Distributed Computing". The workshop includes five talks delivered by prominent researchers working on Game-theoretical distributed computing issues.

Speakers:

• Ioannis Caragiannis, University of Patras
• Stefano Leonardi, Sapienza University of Rome
• Giuseppe Persiano,  Universita di Salerno
• Maria Serna, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
• Paul Spirakis, CTI and Univ. of Patras

Organizers: Chryssis Georgiou (University of Cyprus) and Paul Spirakis (CTI and Univ. of Patras).

Sponsors: University of Cyprus and Comunidad de Madrid.

This workshop has a webpage.

Date: 26/9/2009

Workshop on Theoretical Aspects of Dynamic Distributed Systems  (TADDS)

This meeting has its focus on the dynamic aspects of distributed systems, encompassing systems in existence today and looking into the future development and deployment of dynamic distributed systems, with sound theoretical foundations in mind. Distributed systems are rapidly evolving, and the advent of new classes of applications and technologies, such as VANET, Airborne Networks, Smart Environments, P2P, broad area supercomputing, and distributed cloud services, is radically changing the way we think about them. Dynamic distributed systems have structures that are self-defined at any instant by entities that autonomously decide to participate in the same distributed application. These systems may have continuous arrival and departure of participating entities and normally it may not be possible to assume anything about the universe of participants, their identities, capabilities, or reliability. Understanding the fundamentals of how to master this dynamic dimension is of primary importance to design of robust, dependable, and predictable distributed systems.

This open workshop, held in conjunction with the International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2009), is intended to motivate further concerted study and analysis of dynamic distributed systems. The meeting will include a series of invited presentations that will provide views of the main achievements in this area to date, and motivate research by reviewing key challenges and formulating new directions. A panel with the presenters and led by the organizers will conclude the workshop.

Program of the workshop:

8:30-8.50    Introduction to the workshop
8.50-9.30    Michel Raynal
9.30-10.15  Leslie Lamport

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-11.25  Maarten van Steen
11.25-12.05  Peter Druschel
12.05-12:30  Panel led by the co-chairs

Organizers: Roberto Baldoni (University of Rome "La Sapienza") and Alexander A. Shvartsman (University of Connecticut).