DistOS 2019F 2019-11-20
Readings
Spanner & Tensorflow
- Corbett et al., "Spanner: Google’s Globally-Distributed Database" (OSDI 2012)
- Martin Abadi et al., "TensorFlow: A System for Large-Scale Machine Learning" (OSDI 2016)
Discussion Questions
Spanner
- How does the functionality of Spanner compare to Google's past database efforts? How does it compare to the other systems we've discussed in class?
- What are the key insight(s) that inform the design of Spanner?
- Do you think these insights are general? Specifically, can they be used by other systems?
Tensorflow
- What problem domain is Tensorflow designed for?
- What is the programming model for tensorflow? How does it compare with that of MapReduce?
- Why is tensorflow's model a good fit for its problem domain?
- How does this model map onto a cluster of workstations?
- How general is their approach?