[Sigarch-members] SIGARCH-MSG: 1st January 2007 Digest of SIGARCH Messages

["Doug Burger" <dburger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is the 1st January 2007 Digest of SIGARCH Messages (sigarch-jan07a):

* NSF Funding Deadline (Jan. 17th) for the AES/SMA components of the CSR program
  http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07504/nsf07504.htm
  Submitted by Frederica Darema <fdarema@xxxxxxx>

* Call for Papers: International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC 2007)
  http://www.autonomic-conference.org
  Submitted by Jose Fortes <fortes@xxxxxxx>

--Doug Burger
SIGARCH Information Director
infodir_SIGARCH@xxxxxxx

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Doug Burger			  Office:	       3.432 ACES
Associate Professor		  Phone:	     512-471-9795
Department of Computer Sciences	  Assistant:	     512-232-7460
The University of Texas at Austin Fax:		     512-232-1413
1 University Station, #C0500	  E-mail:   dburger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA	  www.cs.utexas.edu/users/dburger
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* NSF Funding Deadline (Jan. 17th) for the AES/SMA components of the CSR program

Program Title: 

Computer Systems Research (CSR)

Synopsis of Program:

Computer systems are ubiquitous, and society is increasingly dependent on them. They range from microprocessors embedded in automobiles and appliances, to worldwide grids of advanced processors, storage, graphics devices, and instruments interconnected by high-speed networks. Computer systems include large amounts of systems software.  Systems software has two main roles: to provide abstractions and services that facilitate the implementation and execution of application programs; and, to orchestrate effective use of the underlying hardware resources through these abstractions and services.  Computer systems are being applied to increasingly demanding applications. The environments in which they function and the resource configurations to be orchestrated are becoming more diverse, distributed and dynamic. While the time scales for control decisions are shrinking, the scale and complexity of the systems are increasing.  The assumptions underlying current system software no lo!
 nger hold in many cases. Moreover, current computer systems often fail, become compromised or perform poorly because of failures of system software. Responding to these challenges requires new directions in computer systems research. 

The Computer Systems Research (CSR) program supports innovative research and education projects that have the potential to:

lead to significant improvements in computer systems by increasing our fundamental understanding of them;
address challenges raised by new technologies or system requirements;
lead to systems software that is quantifiably more reliable, easier to use, and/or more efficient; and
produce innovative curricula or educational materials that better prepare the next generation of computing professionals.
The CSR program also supports projects that expand the capabilities of computer systems by exploiting the potential of new technologies or by developing innovative new ways to use existing technologies.  CSR-funded projects will strive to make significant progress on challenging high-impact problems, as opposed to incremental progress on familiar problems.  To be successful, CSR proposals must have credible plans for demonstrating the utility and potential impact of the proposed work.

The CSR program is partitioned into two parts:

CORE areas - to support traditional CSR research and education topics.  CSR core areas are: Embedded and Hybrid Systems (EHS); Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems (PDOS); Advanced Execution Systems (AES); and Systems Modeling and Analysis (SMA).  Awards in the core areas may take one of two forms:
Single Investigator and Small Group awards. These awards will include one or two PIs, with budgets of up to $800,000 total, and award durations of two or three years. The estimated average award size is $450,000.
Team awards.  These awards will include three or more PIs, with budgets of up to $1,500,000 total, and award durations of three or four years. The estimated average award size is $900,000.
THEMATIC areas - to stimulate research and education in topics that are considered timely and of emerging importance.  Specific thematic areas may change from year to year.  In FY 2007, the thematic areas are: Cross-Systems Integration (CSI); Virtualization for Configuration Management (VCM); and, Cyber Physical Systems (CPS).  Awards in the thematic areas will be smaller by design, with funding levels ranging from $200,000 to $400,000 total, and with award durations of one or two years.
On occasion, the CSR program will accept proposals for workshops and Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGERs). These proposals may be submitted on or before the deadline for this solicitation under the conditions described herein, or they may be submitted at any other time in accordance with GPG guidelines.  However, prior to submission of any workshop or SGER proposal, a PI must discuss their interests with a CSR Program Officer before submitting the proposal. Additional information about SGER proposals can be found in Section II.D.1. of the NSF Grant Proposal Guide (GPG).

Cognizant Program Officer(s):

Brett Fleisch, Program Director, 1175 N, telephone: (703) 292-4541, fax: (703) 292-9010, email: bfleisch@xxxxxxx

Frederica Darema, Senior Science and Technology Advisor, 1175 N, telephone: (703) 292-8950, fax: (703) 292-9010, email: fdarema@xxxxxxx

D. Helen Gill, Program Director, 1175 N, telephone: (703) 292-8950, fax: (703) 292-9010, email: hgill@xxxxxxx

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* Call for Papers: International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC 2007)

To deal with the increasing complexity of large-scale computing systems, computers and applications must learn to manage themselves in accordance with high-level guidance from humans Ð a vision referred to as autonomic computing (AC). Meeting the grand challenges of AC requires scientific and technological advances in a wide variety of fields, in addition to new software and system architectures that support the effective integration of the constituent technologies.
The purpose of the 4th International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC) is to bring together researchers and practitioners addressing aspects of self-management in computing systems, thereby developing and nurturing a community that can work together to realize the vision of large-scale self-managing systems. Papers are solicited on a broad array of topics of relevance to AC particularly those that bear relationships among different areas of research or report on prototype systems or experiences. Topics of !
 interest include, but are not limited to:

¥	Production or prototype AC systems that exhibit self* features such as self-monitoring, self-configuration, self-optimization, self-healing, and/or self-protection.
¥	Self-managing element such as server, storage, network, or application. Emphasis should be placed on techniques or lessons that may generalize to other elements.
¥	Management topics such as specification and modeling of business-level policies and their mapping to runtime management, including service-level agreements, negotiation or conversation support, and behavior enforcement, design processes, tie in with IT governance, and interaction with legacy systems.
¥	Fundamental science of self-managing systems: understanding, controlling, or exploiting emergent behavior, fault-tolerance, machine learning, control theory, predictive methods and their use to automate manual operations and enforce behavior. 
¥	Software architectures for self-managing systems, based on int!
 eroperable grid services, agent-based systems, web services, m!
 odel-bas
ed systems or novel paradigms such as biological, economic or social. 
¥	System-level technologies, middleware or services that entail interactions among two or more components of self-managing systems such as health monitoring and performance understanding, dependency analysis, problem localization or remediation, workload management, and provisioning).
¥	Operating system support for autonomic systems, including virtualization, migration, and distributed systems technologies.
¥	Interfaces to autonomic systems, including user interfaces, interfaces for monitoring and controlling behavior, techniques for defining, distributing, and understanding policies.
¥	Toolkits, environments, models, languages, runtime and compiler technologies for building self-managing components, systems or applications.
¥	Experiences with autonomic system or component prototypes: measurements, evaluations, or analyses of system behavior, user studies, or experiences with large-scale deployments of se!
 lf-managing systems or applications.

PAPER/POSTER SUBMISSIONS AND PUBLICATION
Full papers (a maximum of 10 pages in length) and posters (2 pages) are invited on a wide variety of AC-related topics as indicated above. All manuscripts will be reviewed and judged on merits including correctness, originality, technical strength, quality of presentation, and relevance to the conference themes. Submitted papers must include original work, and may not be under consideration for another conference or journal. They should also not be under review or be submitted to another forum during the ICAC-07 review process. Posters are not subject to any of these restrictions. Authors should submit full papers or posters electronically (PDF or postscript) via the ICAC-07 conference web site at http://www.autonomic-conference.org, and should follow IEEE CS format - style files can be found at ftp://pubftp.computer.org/Press/Outgoing/proceedings/. Accepted papers and posters will appear in proc!
 eedings published by IEEE Computer Society Press, which will b!
 e distri
buted at the conference.

DEMOS/EXHIBITS SESSION
ICAC07 will feature demos and exhibits session consisting of prototypes and technology artifacts such as demonstrating autonomic software or autonomic computing principles. A separate call for demonstrations and exhibits will be issued. Entries will be judged by a separate subcommittee led by the demo/exhibit chair. Please see the conference web site for more information.

WORKHOPS & TUTORIALS
ICAC07 will feature workshops and tutorials on topics related to autonomic computing. The objectives of the workshops are to complement the main program and to extend the scope of the conference. Proposals for half-day and full day workshops and tutorials are solicited. Entries will be judged by a separate subcommittee, headed by the workshop and tutorial chairs respectively.

STUDENT AWARDS
A student best paper award will be presented. It will consist of a plaque, complimentary student registration to the conference and an honorarium th!
 at will partially cover travel & hotel costs. A student paper is defined as one in which the principal (not sole) author is a student. The student will be required to present the paper to receive the award.

VENUE
ICAC07 will be held in Jacksonville, Florida, USA, at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront Hotel, 225 East Coastline Drive, Jacksonville, FL 32202.

IMPORTANT DATES
Title/Abstract submissions: 10:00 PM PST, Jan 5, 2007	Workshop proposals submissions: December 11, 2006
Demo/Exhibit/Tutorial Proposal submissions: March 3, 2007	Full paper submissions: 10:00 PM PST, Jan 10, 2007
Author notification: February 27, 2007	Final manuscripts due: April 03, 2007

INFORMATION
Web Page: http://www.autonomic-conference.org   E-mail: icac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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