SIGMETRICS Annual Report

July 1997 - June 1998
Submitted by: Murray Woodside , SIGMETRICS Chair

1. Publications

SIGMETRICS published four numbers of PER (Performance Evaluation Review) in Volume 26.

Volume 26, Number 1, of June, 1998, with over 300 pages, was the proceedings of the annual conference. The other numbers contained research papers organised into special issues, described below.

The SIGMETRICS electronic bulletin board is increasingly active. This is a monitored bulletin board administered by Pat Worley, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This bulletin board currently has over 600 subscribers. Typical postings include: calls for conference and journal papers, advance conference programs, employment opportunities, contents of recent books, announcements of research reports, book reviews, research queries on performance related issues, seminar announcements, announcements of performance tools, and benchmark/measurement data. Submissions can be sent to performance@haven.epm.ornl.gov and subscription requests can be sent to performance-request@haven.epm.ornl.gov.

2. Special Projects

A revitalization of PER (Performance Evaluation Review) has been achieved by the new Editor, Scott Leutenegger. A series of special issues with distinguished guest editors, has begun to appear, as follows

Date	Guest Editor	Topic
August, 1997	Dick Muntz	Multimedia Systems
December, 1997	Dave Kotz	I/O Systems
March, 1997	David Nicol	Telecommunications Descriptive Language
August, 1998	C. Lindemann	Stochastic Petri Nets

The following issues are scheduled to appear in the near future

Date	Guest Editor	Topic
December, 1998	P. Cao	Internet Server Performance
March, 1999	K. Sevcik	Practical Multiprocessor Scheduling
August, 1999	C. Williamson	Web Traffic Modelling

This schedule conforms to the plan established 18 months ago.

3. Conference Highlights

SIGMETRICS'98/PERFORMANCE'98
The annual SIGMETRICS conference was held June 22-26, 1998 in Madison, Wisconsin, with General Chair Mary Vernon. As usual every third year, it was a joint conference with the IFIP 7.3 Working Group on Computer Performance, and had the title Sigmetrics 98/Performance 98. The conference was co-sponsored by the IFIP working group.

The main conference highlights included:

14 tutorials organized in 4 tracks spanning 1.5 days
a full-day affiliated workshop
25 technical papers (136 submitted papers),
a keynote address by Susan Owicki
a "work in progress" session.

The acceptance ratio (18%) 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. The conference returned a profit of over $20,000, of which the SIG receives half, as equal co-sponsor.

SPDT 98
SIGMETRICS sponsored the Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Tools (SPDT'98), which was held in Welches, Oregon, August 3-4, 1998.

WOSP 98
This year SIGMETRICS has sponsored a new conference, the first International Workshop on Software and Performance (WOSP 98), to be held in Santa Fe, NM in October 1998, with General Chair Connie U. Smith.

4. Awards

No papers were selected as "best paper" and "best student paper" by the program committee of the Sigmetrics 98/Performance 98 conference. this year.

5. Educational Activities

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

6. International Initiatives

SIGMETRICS has a special relationship with IFIP WG 7.3, which is a world-wide grouping of about 100 researchers which holds regular conferences and workshops. A joint conference is held every three years since 1980, and this was one in the series.

7. Collaborative Efforts

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

**SIGMETRICS will be an "in cooperation" sponsor of the 10th International Conference on Modelling Techniques and Tools for Computer Performance Evaluation (TOOLS'97), which will be held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, Sept 16-18, 1998.

**SIGMETRICS will be a co-sponsor of the 6th Annual Workshop on Input/Output in Parallel and Distributed Systems (IOPADS'99) to be held at FCRC in Atlanta in May 99. Other sponsors include SIGACT, SIGARCH, SIGOPS, and SIGPLAN.

SIGMETRICS will be an "in cooperation" sponsor of the 4th ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'99).

8. Outstanding Volunteer Efforts

The following individuals are noted for their outstanding volunteer efforts:

Mary Vernon, General Chair, SIGMETRICS'98/PERFORMANCE'98
Garth Gibson, Program Co-Chair for SIGMETRICS, for the SIGMETRICS'98/PERFORMANCE'98 conference.
Pat Worley, Bulletin Board Director
Scott Leutenegger, Editor-in-Chief of PER (Performance Evaluation Review).

9. Concerns

The primary concerns within SIGMETRICS are:

identifying and maintaining our membership
interacting with other groups such as SIGCOMM, SIGOPS, SIGARCH, groups in IEEE, IFIP W.G. 7.3, CMG, which are heavily involved with performance issues

10. SIG Program Plan

Our goals can be summarized as fulfilling our special role as the "home base" for performance methodology of all kinds, in combination with cooperation with the many groups which are deeply concerned with performance issues. Thus we will:

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 a 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.