Distributed Systems

At the same time, embedded systems —formerly stand-alone systems —are themselves becoming part of the global infrastructure.The rapid deployment of sensors, cell phones and tablets, and networked microcontrollers throughout all of our technology creates fantastic opportunities and tremendous challenges in this field.

Carnegie Mellon has a rich history in distributed systems, with early work in parallel and distributed computers, distributed file systems and cluster computing. This research was characterized by our empirical, application-driven approach: research addressed pressing application needs and developed prototypes that could be used and evaluated by users. This research style continues to drive today’s research. Our research agenda is driven by the critical role the distributed service infrastructure plays in today’s society. While high performance remains important, system properties such as high availability, security and privacy, and manageability have also arisen as first-order requirements. All of these challenges are major research areas at Carnegie Mellon, where we focus on four research categories: data centers, information retrieval, peer-to-peer systems, and foundations.