the 10 Berkeley projects on which I
participated.
The multidisciplinary nature of the
project means students gain hands-on
knowledge about other areas by working closely with students and faculty
in other fields. The experience they
gain building the common prototype
helps them develop taste in research
topics, which in turn helps them pick
interesting research topics for their
dissertations and later in the rest of
their careers.
Group projects create communities
where students have others with whom
to interact. In particular, the more senior students can mentor the junior
ones. Being a Ph.D. student can be a
very lonely experience, especially when
it comes time to write a dissertation;
being part of a larger group can allay
those feelings of isolation.
We recently started celebrating
the 10-year anniversary of the end of
projects. The high participation level
at these reunions indicates that these
personal ties in such communities remain 10 years later. The accompanying photo shows the Network of Workstations (NOW) group reunion held
last year.a
Research retreats. Key to the success
of these projects, and to the development of Berkeley systems graduate
students, has been twice-a-year, three-day retreats where students on the
project present their results to one- or
two-dozen guests from industry or
non-academic labs. These are intensive events, lasting from early breakfast to late-night discussions, although
we do take off one afternoon to have
some fun. Retreats act as project milestones, with the specter of presenting
to outside visitors motivating students
to meet the milestones. We close the
retreats with an outsider feedback session that offers advice on any aspect of
the research. It’s surprisingly rare in
academia to get frank feedback about
research, but who can’t benefit from
constructive criticism?
Retreats give graduate students two
chances per year to give a serious talk
Patterson’s research projects.
Years
1977–1981
1980–1984
1983–1986
1985–1989
title
X-Tree: A Tree-Structured Multiprocessor
RISC: Reduced Instruction Set Computer
SOAR: Smalltalk On A RISC
SPUR: Symbolic Processing
Using RISCs
RAID: Redundant Array
of Inexpensive Disks
NOW: Network of Workstations
IRAM: Intelligent RAM
ROC: Recovery Oriented Computing
RAD Lab: Reliable Adaptive
Distributed Computing Lab
Par Lab: Parallel Computing Lab
Professors
3
3
2
6
students
12
17
12
21
1988–1992
3
16
1993–1998
1997–2002
2001–2005
2005–2010
4
3
2
7
25
12
11
30
2007–2012
8
40
a Additional photos are included with the version of this Viewpoint available at the
Communications Web site, cacm.acm.org. The online
version has names and group photos for RAID
and SPUR reunions and for the most recent
Par Lab and RAD Lab retreats.
and receive advice from experienced researchers outside academia with different experience and perspectives from
the faculty on the project. Students are
energized when external people care
about their work and find it important. When we advisers say something
is good, many students will assume
we are just acting as cheerleaders or
just trying to get them to work harder.
I believe interaction with thoughtful
colleagues from industry and non-academic labs is vital to acquiring research taste in computer systems by
learning to identify critical problems
and impactful solutions. Retreats also
introduce students to a network of colleagues that may prove useful later in
their careers.
Such projects and retreats might be
difficult at some places. Building collaborations with local universities and
industry can produce many of the same
benefits. The key is to get everyone to
stay the full time and have people outside your group provide candid feedback. For example, there is an annual
Boston Area Architecture workshop
involving Brown, Harvard, UMass,
Northeast, RPI, and local industry so
that their students can cut their teeth
in front of a friendly audience and get
feedback from outsiders.
We have been doing retreats for
25 years. To my surprise, three years
ago we discovered another technique
that is becoming just as important to
the success of projects and graduate
students.
Open collaborative laboratory. We
were increasingly seeing people optimize their schedules to avoid disruptions by working from home when they
didn’t have classes or meetings, since
computers and networks were just as
fast at home as in the office. The negative global impact of such a local optimization can be thought of as corollary
of Metcalf’s Law: if the value of a network is proportional to the square of
the number of connected users, even a
small group leaving a network can significantly decrease its value. This drop
in value can in turn cause others to
leave, with the negative feedback loop
continuing until the network nearly
collapses.
In 2006, we experimented by creating a physical office area with contiguous open space for everyone in the project, including the faculty. We hoped
that easy access to faculty would draw
students to campus and that the open
space would inspire innovation by increasing the chances of spontaneous
discussions. 1
The open space makes it very convenient to quickly grab a group of interested people on a moment’s notice for
a discussion rather than trying to wander around the building or exchange a
volley of email messages to schedule a
meeting. We have also been surprised
to see new students in this space quickly act like senior graduate students.
Apparently, easy access to faculty plus
