Title: TimeStream: Reliable Stream Computation in the Cloud (EuroSys 2013)

Speaker: Zhengping Qian, Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA)

Time: 2:00pm, Wednesday, Jan 15, 2014

Venue: Rm A408, #5 Building, General Department of ISCAS

Contact: Kai Wang (wangkai@iscas.ac.cn)

Abstract: TimeStream is a distributed system designed specifically for low-latency continuous processing of big streaming data on a large cluster of commodity machines. The unique characteristics of this emerging application domain have led to a significantly different design from the popular MapReduce-style batch data processing. In particular, we advocate a powerful new abstraction called resilient substitution that caters to the specific needs in this new computation model to handle failure recovery and dynamic reconfiguration in response to load changes. Several real-world applications running on our prototype have been shown to scale robustly with low latency while at the same time maintaining the simple and concise declarative programming model. We have been transferring the technology into a Microsoft product currently for internal use.

Bio: Dr. Zhengping Qian is a researcher in the System Research Group at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA). His research interests are in distributed and mobile computing with an emphasis on emerging applications. Dr. Qian joined MSRA in July of 2009 after obtaining his PhD from South China University of Technology. He accomplished his first research project during his sophomore year and published a paper in Chinese. His first conference paper in English was awarded best paper in EuroSys 2012.