SIGMETRICS Annual Report

July 1996 - June 1997
Submitted by: Larry Dowdy, SIGMETRICS Chair

Publications

SIGMETRICS published one special issue of PER (Performance Evaluation Review), Volume 25, 1 (June, 1997), 302 pages. This issue consisted of the proceedings of the annual conference.

The SIGMETRICS electronic bulletin board remains active. This is a monitored bulletin board administered by Pat Worley, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This bulletin board currently has 633 subscribers. Typical postings include: calls for conference and journal papers, surveys, advance conference programs, employment opportunities, contents of recent books, book reviews and recommendations, miscellaneous queries and requests regarding performance related issues, seminar announcements, announcements of performance tools, and benchmark/measurement data. This past year, 107 messages were distributed. By monitoring the postings and eliminating messages that do not have wide appeal, this bulletin board is providing an effective communication forum for many members. Submissions can be sent to performance@haven.epm.ornl.gov and subscription requests can be sent to performance-request@haven.epm.ornl.gov.

Special Projects

A revitalization of PER (Performance Evaluation Review) has begun. A series of special issues, with Scott Leutenegger as the new Editor-in-Chief and a distinguished set of guest editors, has been slated. The current schedule for forthcoming issues is:

Date	Guest Editor	Topic
August, 1997	Dick Muntz	Multimedia Systems
December, 1997	Dave Kotz	I/O Systems
March, 1997	David Nicol	Parallel Simulation
August, 1998	C. Lindemann	Stochastic Petri Nets
December, 1998	K. Sevcik	Practical Multiprocessor Scheduling

Conference Highlights

The annual SIGMETRICS conference was held June 15-18, 1997 in Seattle. The main conference highlights included:

10 tutorials,
25 technical papers (130 submitted papers),
a keynote address by Hans-Werner Braun,
a "hot topics" session, and
a "work in progress" session.

The acceptance ratio (19%) of technical papers indicates the continued high standards of the conference. Special efforts were made to balance theory and practice oriented papers. These efforts were successful. The conference was attended by approximately 130 attendees. Preliminary estimates are that the conference was financially successful.

Awards

The Best Student Paper Award was presented at the annual conference to:

Ramakrishnan Rajamony and Alan Cox (Rice University), "Performance Debugging Shared Memory Parallel Programs"

Educational Activities

No special or unique educational activities took place in 1996-97.

International Initiatives

SIGMETRICS has a special relationship with IFIP WG 7.3. A joint conference is held every three years. The last such joint conference was held in Ottawa, Canada, in May, 1995. Next year's conference will be held in Madison, Wisconsin and will be a joint conference with IFIP WG 7.3.

Collaborative Efforts

SIGMETRICS traditionally enjoys a special relationship with the Computer Measurement Group (CMG), another independent non-profit professional society dedicated to computer performance. In previous years, SIGMETRICS and CMG have collaborated on educational initiatives (i.e., the Performance Supplement series), have served on each other's advisory committees, and have facilitated publicity of each other's events. These two organizations complement each other by serving both practicing managers/analysts and researchers/educators.

SIGMETRICS was a co-sponsor, with SIGCOMM, SIGOPS, SIGACT, and CESDIS NASA, for the Second ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'96), which was held in White Plains, New York, November 10-12, 1996.

SIGMETRICS was an "in cooperation" sponsor of the 9th International Conference on Modelling Techniques and Tools for Computer Performance Evaluation (TOOLS'97), which was held in Saint-Malo, France, June 2-4, 1997.

SIGMETRICS was an "in cooperation" sponsor of the 7th International Workshop on Petri Nets and Performance Models (PNPM'97), which was held in Saint-Malo, France, June 2-4, 1997.

SIGMETRICS will be a co-sponsor of the Fifth Annual Workshop on Input/Output in Parallel and Distributed Systems (IOPADS'97), which will be held in San Jose, November 17, 1997, co-located with Supercomputing'97. Other sponsors include SIGACT, SIGARCH, SIGOPS, and SIGPLAN.

SIGMETRICS will be a co-sponsor of the Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Tools (SPDT'98), which will be held either in Welches, Oregon, August 3-4, 1998, or in conjunction with SIGMETRICS/PERFORMANCE'98 which will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, June 23-26, 1998.

SIGMETRICS is planning to be a sponsor of a workshop on software and performance, which is tentatively scheduled for May, 1998.

Outstanding Volunteer Efforts

The following individuals are noted for their outstanding volunteer efforts:

John Zahorjan, General Chair, SIGMETRICS'97
Albert Greenberg, Program Chair, SIGMETRICS'97
Pat Worley, Bulletin Board Director
Scott Leutenegger, PER's new Editor-in-Chief

SIGMETRICS recently completed new officer elections. The results are:

Murray Woodside, Chair
Mary Vernon, Vice Chair
Carey Williamson, Secretary/Treasurer
Larry Dowdy, Board of Directors
Albert Greenberg, Board of Directors
Richard Muntz, Board of Directors
Mark Squillante, Board of Directors

Concerns

The primary concerns within SIGMETRICS are:

How can we better interact with other organizations (e.g., special interest groups within ACM and IEEE, IFIP W.G. 7.3, CMG) where performance issues naturally arise?
How can we best exploit and develop various WWW services?
How should we best address membership issues?

SIG Program Plan

The following summarizes future plans:

Continue to support our annual conference.
Continue to encourage the regular publication of PER as a series of special issues with recognized guest editors.
Continue to promote the balance between theory and practice within the performance evaluation community.
Promote and encourage joint efforts with other groups interested in systems (e.g., CMG, SIGARCH, SIGOPS, SIGSIM, SIGCOMM, IEEE-TCOS, IFIPS) by sponsoring appropriate technical meetings.
Develop a broad set of services via the WWW.
Encourage further educational initiatives such as the P.S. series.
Continue the bulletin board and encourage various categories of postings.