Programmable Software Systems for Correct High-performance Applications

Abstract:
We live in an era of unprecedented compute availability. The advent of the cloud allows anyone to deploy critical high-performance applications that serve millions of users without owning or managing any computational resources. The goal of my research is to enable the development of such high-performance applications with robust correctness guarantees. To achieve this goal, I build practical programmable software systems that target realistic workloads in widely-used environments. My systems are rooted in solid foundations, incorporating formal specifications and techniques drawn from the programming languages, compilers, and formal methods literature.

In this talk I will present some of my work on such systems, including PaSh, the first optimization system for the Unix shell since its inception 50 years ago, as well as MuCache, a caching system for microservice graphs. Surprisingly, the shell and microservices have a key characteristic in common, they are both used to compose black-box components to create applications that are greater than the sum of their parts. I will conclude the talk by describing ongoing and future directions towards improving the performance and efficiency of cloud applications

Bio:
Konstantinos Kallas is an assistant professor of CS at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is interested in building systems that enable the development of high-performance applications with robust correctness guarantees, both in theory and in practice. His research spans several domains, from serverless and microservices to the Unix shell, has appeared at several venues including OSDI, NSDI, EuroSys, POPL, OOPSLA, and VLDB, and has received several awards (Dennis M. Richie SIGOPS 2024 dissertation award, best paper at EuroSys 21, best presentation at HotOS 21, and 2nd place at the ACM SRC Grand Finals). His research has led to the development of PaSh, the first optimizing compiler for the shell, which is supported by the Linux Foundation.