At a glance Microsoft Research publishes breakthrough in Nature on glass-based data storage that could preserve information for 10,000 years.  New technique extends technology from expensive fused silica to ordinary borosilicate glass found in kitchen cookware.  Innovations enable faster parallel writing,  

Memory and network bottlenecks are increasingly limiting AI system performance by reducing GPU utilization and overall efficiency, ultimately preventing infrastructure from reaching its full potential despite enormous investments. At the core of this challenge is a fundamental trade-off in the communication technologies used for memory and network interconnects. Datacenters typically deploy two types of physical cables for communication between GPUs. Traditional  

As the demand for faster, more reliable wireless communication continues to grow, but traditional systems face limitations in efficiency and adaptability. To keep up with  

SHAN LU: Thank you. BOGDAN STOICA: Thanks for having us. HUIZINGA: Shan, let’s kick things off with you. Give us a brief overview of your paper. What problem or issue does it address, and why should we care about it? LU: Yeah, so basically from the title, we are looking at retry bugs in software systems. So what retry means is that people may not realize for big software like the ones that run in Microsoft, all kinds of unexpected […]

[TEASER ENDS]  GRETCHEN HUIZINGA: You’re listening to Collaborators, a Microsoft Research Podcast showcasing the range of expertise that goes into transforming mind-blowing ideas into world-changing technologies. I’m Dr. Gretchen Huizinga. [MUSIC FADES]  Today I’m talking to Dr. Richard Black, a senior principal research manager and the research director of Project Silica at Microsoft Research. And with him is Dexter Greene, a rising freshman at the University of Michigan and a recent graduate of Avenues: The World School in New York […]

Software-driven wide area network (SWAN) is a system that enables centralized management and control of network infrastructure to improve reliability and efficiency. SWAN controls the timing and volume of traffic each service sends and automatically reconfigures the network’s data plane to match traffic demand. Over the last decade, I’ve had the opportunity to shepherd SWAN from a research idea to a foundational system for Microsoft Azure (opens in new tab). I want to share a few thoughts to commemorate this […]

BEHNAZ ARZANI: Thank you. And I’m also excited to be here. HUIZINGA: So since the show is about ideas and leans more philosophical, I like to start with a little personal story and try to tease out anything that might have been an inflection point in your life, a sort of aha moment, or a pivotal event, or an animating “what if,” we could call it. What captured your imagination and got you inspired to do what you’re doing today? […]

Networked systems and their applications are essential in building the reliable, scalable, secure, and innovative infrastructure required to meet society’s evolving needs. One of the premier events in this field, the 21st USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (opens in new tab) (NSDI ‘24), provides a platform for researchers and experts to share insights, present research findings, and collaborate on the latest advances in the design, implementation, and evaluation of networked and distributed systems. Microsoft is honored to […]

TUSHER CHAKRABORTY: Hi. Thank you for having me here, Gretchen, today. Thank you. HUIZINGA: So because this show is all about abstracts, in just a few sentences, tell us about the problem your paper addresses and why we should care about it. CHAKRABORTY: Yeah, so think of, I’m a farmer living in a remote area and bought a sensor to monitor the soil quality of my farm. The big headache for me would be how to connect the sensor so […]

Heuristic algorithms, often referred to as heuristics, are tools used to approximate optimal algorithms to make faster and more efficient decisions. These are particularly useful in operational scenarios in production systems, such as determining which server a virtual machine should be assigned to or deciding whether data should be