[LUGSB] Seagate Research "disk technologies" talk today (3/14 1pm CS-1310)

[Erez Zadok]

Title:

	It's a Wonder That They Work At All ---
	Disk Drives, Embedded Software, and Seamless Data

Speaker:

	Sami Iren
	Research Staff Member
	Interfaces & Architecture
	Seagate Research
	sami.iren at seagate.com

Talk Abstract

This talk will briefly overview the current state of disk drive technology
and talk about some of the advanced work going on today at Seagate Research.
Each year, we manage to squeeze more bits into a smaller space using new
physics, new chemistry, novel material science, advances in mechanical
engineering and more sophisticated signal processing.  In addition, we are
being asked to do more to keep these bits safe for longer periods of time
and against wider threats.  The talk will also cover the current work of the
Storage Systems research group which is a recently-established group with a
charter to expand the intelligence and functional variety of storage
devices.  The trend toward additional device intelligence and "freedom" in
various forms has been in place for many years, and customers are rapidly
moving away from dollars/gigabyte as their primary goodness metric.  This is
pushing us to consider the "big picture" of how individual disk drives are
used in larger systems, and how we best play our role in these
systems.  Finally, the talk will briefly cover "seamless data" project that
tries to better understand how today's media-rich devices are talking to
each other and to identify the technical barriers to seamless
interoperability among all the gadgets that play a central role in managing
people's data.

Speaker Bio

Sami Iren, Ph.D., is a research staff member at Seagate Research in
Pittsburgh, PA.  He is the co-chair of SNIA OSD Technical Working Group and
has been a major contributor to the standardization of OSD (Object Based
Storage Device) since 2002.  His research interests are intelligent storage
devices and interfaces, multimedia, and networking. Before joining Seagate,
he worked in the telecommunication industry for three years as a researcher
and developer.  He has a BS in Computer Engineering from Middle East
Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, and MS and Phd degrees in Computer
Science from University of Delaware.