About the talk:
 

Microsoft builds several data centers each year, with each center containing in excess of fifty thousand servers. This is quite expensive, and we'd like to reduce the capital and operating expenses for these centers. This talk suggests that an effective way to do this is to treat the data center as a system, rather than focusing on the individual components such as networking and servers. I'll describe one way this could work, with a particular focus on the networking infrastructure.

 

About the speaker:
 

Charles P. (Chuck) Thacker joined Microsoft in 1997 as Director of Advanced Systems to assist in the establishment of Microsoft's Cambridge Research Lab, where he was involved in recruiting, defining the research agenda, publicity, and establishing the lab's operating procedures. At the end of this two-year assignment, he returned to the U.S. and worked on the first Tablet PC. In 2005, he returned to Microsoft Research, where he is building a group to engage in computer architecture research at Microsoft's Silicon Valley Campus. In 2007 Thacker received the IEEE's John Von Neumann medal, which is awarded for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology, for his central role in the creation of the personal computer and the development of networked computer systems.