Department of  Computing

Applications of Computing in Industry : Lecture

10 October
12pm, LT308 Huxley
 
company: Google

Title: Solving the Halting Problem: Using Computer Science to Cope When Computer Science Fails to Match Computing Reality
Abstract:

Computer Science provides us with idealised systems, provably correct algorithms, loop invariants, Turing Machines operating on infinitely long tapes, absolute values of True and False, instantaneous message passing, and CPUs where 1+1=2 is taken for granted. The real world has power cuts, fibre cuts, weather, the speed of light, intermittent bugs, randomly flipping memory bits, disk failures, and fallible humans all over the place. Luckily, Computer Science also provides us with techniques and tools to cope. We look at a variety of ideas and technologies which enable Google to serve billions of pages to millions of users every day, and how those techniques can be used to make any system more resilient.

Speaker Details: Mike Wyer
 

Mike joined Google in March 2011 and is currently a Site Reliability Engineer for Google Calendar, Tasks, Sites, and Apps, where he has worked on improving production monitoring, support tools, and automation systems.

Prior to Google, Mike worked in the quantitative analytics team at Barclays Capital, was a Unix engineer at Morgan Stanley, and a senior systems programmer in the Imperial College Computing Department, where he developed the Lexis system that won the prize for Best Applied Paper at LISA 2001.

Mike earned a bachelor's degree in joint maths and computing (JMC) from Imperial College in 1999.


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