Slide 1

One View of the Berkeley Community/Culture

(from a person with CS heritage)

Dave PattersonUniversity of California at Berkeley

Patterson@cs.berkeley.edu

April 2001

Slide 2

Outline• Teaching Matters (really!)• Research is started (learned) in Grad

Courses• Communal attitude towards new faculty• Hire and develop young lions• Being at a Great Public University• Proximity to Silicon Valley• Berkeley’s Research Goals• One Approach to Systems Research• What happened to one crop of students• Retreat Approach to Running Projects• It takes work to maintain a good community

Slide 3

Teaching Matters (really!)• Dick Karp and Manuel Blum as role models

– World class researchers and teachers, grad and undergrad courses

• Friendly competition via HKN ratings– Share ideas on what works, what doesn’t– Share course materials

• University embraces teaching (since ~ 1985)– Raised bar for tenure– Good teachers promoted faster– Less successful teachers promoted slower

+ glass ceiling on how far promoted

• Consider focus on teaching quality vs. surviving course workload in Fall?

Slide 4

Research is started in Courses• RISC, SPUR, RAID, NOW, IRAM, ISTORE all

started in advanced graduate courses– initial investigations & discussions with real deadlines

• Also, students learn how to do research in first year graduate courses – Make transition from undergraduate student to

graduate researcher– First year courses: select topic from menu, do

research, write paper, give talk, do poster session– Prof meets each team 1-on-1 ~3 times– Some papers get submitted and published

Slide 5

Communal attitude towards faculty hiring

• Democratic, holistic approach hiring: whole faculty participates– Vs. hiring committee does everything and get to

meet new hire when they arrive (and know little about them)

• Three musketeers approach to hiring: what are the right hires for us to be #1 vs. how can our group win– Decision is not up to a group, but to whole faculty– Danger as increase size, groups starting to

strategize vs. community discussion

Slide 6

Hire and develop young lion(esse)s

• Normally hire new PhDs– Also more mature PhDs who have joint appointments

• Senior faculty add junior faculty to proposals (Micro and gov’t)– Show them the ropes of research

• Protect young faculty from hard committee work, good course schedule, offer advice, listen to them and follow their advice – Randy noticed large difference between Berkeley and

our competing institutions in leaders among faculty

• Young lion(esse)s mature into department leaders

Slide 7

Being at a (Great) Public University

• UC is a miracle: what other great multicampus public university?– NRC ratings what matter (who cares about magazine?);

35/36 departments in top 10 – Berkeley also #1 producer of PhDs

• We educate Californians; 7X Stanford– 20,000 undergrads, 90% Californians– Stanford 5000 undergrads, 50% Californians

• Often educate 1st member of family to go to college– Vs. 4th generation to go to Ivy League school– Often immigrants: was SE Asia, now its Russia

• We are a key part of the American Dream

Slide 8

Proximity to Silicon Valley• Consulting to become aware of real

problems• Talks from valley people doing exciting

work• Guests at research retreats• Bay Area Research Directors dinner• Sometimes help in teaching courses

(especially joint teaching)• Proximity to Stanford – 30 miles between 2

of the best departments in the world – Great Book co-authors– Joint teaching and research in the future:

Last year Hanrahan/Malik; next Fall Fox/Patterson

Slide 9

Berkeley’s Research Goals• Have Impact, not just count Journal Papers

– Some universities have bad benchmarks– Recently realized that when goal is not impact,

you rarely have impact

• Produce Great Students, not # Journal Papers– Try to create projects that if I were a student,

I would almost kill myself to try to join – Not all projects equally successful in research impact,

but all can produce great students» One last shove: visit former students in first year to see

how they are going, give advice, + give a talk that features their work and helps their visibility

– As get further in career, you realize thatStudents are the coin of the academic realm

Slide 10

One Approach to Systems Research

• Find an important problem crossing HW/SW Interface, with HW/SW prototype at end,(usually started in a graduate course)

• Assemble a band of 3-6 faculty, 12-20 grad students, 1-3 staff to tackle it over 4-5 years

• Meet twice a year for 3-day retreats with invited outsiders– Builds team spirit, advice on direction, change course– Offers milestones for project stages– Grad students give 6 to 8 talks Great Speakers

• Write papers, Finish prototype, get PhDs, jobs

• End of project party, reshuffle faculty, go to 1• 10 year reunion

Slide 11

SPUR 10 Year Reunion, January ‘99

• Everyone from North America came!• 19 PhDs: 9 to Academia

– 8/9 got tenure, 4 full professors (already)•Susan Eggers in current Economist on her research

– 2 Romme fellows (3rd, 4th at Wisconsin)– 3 NSF Presidential Young Investigator Winners– 2 ACM Dissertation Awards– They in turn produced 30 PhDs (1/99)

• 10 to Industry– Founders of 5 startups, (1 failed, 1 acquired)– 2 Department heads (AT&T Bell Labs, Microsoft)

• Very successful group; SPUR Project “gave them a taste of success, lifelong friends”

• “Berkeley is on lunatic fringe on multi-faculty projects”

Slide 12

Group Photo (in souvenir jackets)

• See www.cs.berkeley.edu/Projects/ARC to learn more about Berkeley Systems

Garth GibsonCMU, Founder ?

Dave Lee Founder Si. Image

MendelRosen-blum,

Stanford,FounderVMWare

Ben Zorn Colorado,

M/S

David Wood,Wisconsin

Jim Larus, Wisconsin, M/S

MarkHill

Wisc.

SusanEggersWash-ington

Brent Welch Founder, Scriptics

John Ouster-hout

Founder, Scriptics

George Taylor, Founder, ?

Shing Kong Si. Image

Slide 13

People I Have Worked With• Worked with 13 Berkeley faculty (so far)

– RISC I,II » Sequin, Ousterhout (CAD)

– SOAR (Smalltalk On A RISC) » Ousterhout (CAD)

– SPUR (Symbolic Processing Using RISCs)» Fateman, Hilfinger, Hodges, Katz, Ousterhout

– RAID I,II (Redundant Array of Inexp. Disks)» Katz, Ousterhout, Stonebraker

– NOW I,II (Network of Workstations), (TD)» Culler, Anderson, Brewer

– IRAM I (Intelligent RAM)» Yelick, Wawrzynek

– ISTORE I / ROC I (Recovery Oriented Comp.)» Yelick, Kubiatowicz (+ Fox @ Stanford?)

• Also papers with other faculty (Despain, Karp, …)

Slide 14

Patterson’s Projects, Faculty, Commercial Impact

• Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC)– What: simplified instructions to exploit VLSI: ‘80-’84– With: Sequin@UC, Hennessy@Stanford, Cocke@IBM– Direct Impact: Sun, RISC >90% embedded MPUs

• Symbolic Processing Using RISCs (SPUR)– What: desktop multiprocessor for AI: ‘84 - ‘89 – With: Fateman, Hilfinger, Hodges, Katz, Ousterhout– Direct Impact: PLL => fast serial lines => Silicon Image

• Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)– What: many PC disks for speed, reliability: ‘88 - ‘93– With: Katz, Ousterhout, Stonebraker– Direct Impact:$25B/yr(EMC) 80% nonPC disks RAID

Slide 15

• Networks of Workstations (NOW)– What: big server via switched network of WS ’94-’98 – With: Anderson, Brewer, Culler– Direct Impact: Inktomi + many Internet companies

• Tertiary Disk (TD: a NOW subset project)– What: big, cheap, disk-NOW (for SF Museum) ’96-’99 – Direct Impact: Scale8 (big, reliable Internet storage)

• Intelligent RAM (IRAM)– What: media processor inside DRAM chip: ‘97 - ‘01 – With: Yelick (and Wawrzynek)

• ISTORE/Recovery-Oriented Computing (ROC)– What: Available, Maintainable Servers: HW,SW,LW – With: Yelick (and Kubiatowicz)

Patterson’s Projects, People, Impact

Slide 16

Retreat Research Style• Project Reviews with Outsiders

– Twice a year: 3-day retreat@Tahoe– Faculty, students, staff + guests– Key piece is feedback at end– Can change minds of faculty– Breaks enable valuable discussion– Builds team spirit (all play&work)– Helps create deadlines– Helps with technology transfer– Always amazed of value at end

• By far, most important idea to run 10-25 person project– Cost ~ 1 grad student– Visitors donate $ = 4 to 6 grads

Slide 17

Maintaining a community takes work

• Informal lunches on Northside– Across disciplines with smart, interesting people– What Ousterhout misses most– Only community activity in 1977

• Faculty retreat (v.meeting), starting in ~ 1980• Weekly Faculty lunch, by Sequin in ~ 1982• Grad student review, started in ~ 1983• Research retreats at Lake Tahoe, ~ 1987 • Faculty side-by-side in Soda, stairway ~ 1990• Faculty book club, started by Katz in ~ 1995• Sherry Hour/Great thoughts, in ~ 1998• <<Your good idea goes here>>

Slide 18

Outline• Teaching Matters (really!)• Research is started in Grad Courses• Communal attitude towards new faculty• Hire and develop young lions/lionesses• Being at a Great Public University• Proximity to Silicon Valley• Berkeley’s Research Goals• One Approach to Systems Research• What happened to one crop of students• Retreat Approach to Running Projects• It takes work to maintain a good

community