Riya Bisht

Present and Future Computing Systems

It was such a fun experience! I spent time talking to people, making so many friends and connections. We were engrossed in conversations for hours, sharing memories that might just last forever (or so I hope, haha).

We were greeted with a warm welcome at the Hoysala Guest House at Indian Institue Of Science, IISc, where I finally met some of my online friends. These were people I had been talking to for a long time, even before I joined IISc. It felt great to finally see them in person.

After reaching the guest house, I decided to get some food. I went to the nearest mess inside the campus. To my surprise, the mess was serving North Indian food! I mean, I had come all the way to Bengaluru to try some authentic South Indian cuisine, and now I was faced with dal and roti? But, well, I had no other choice since this was the only mess open at night—the other South Indian messes were already closed. No big deal. I opted for Dal Khichdi and, to my delight, it turned out to be delicious. Honestly, I had never tasted such good khichdi for just a couple of bucks! That moment deserved a selfie, and yes, we took our first one. A nice shot!

After dinner, we decided to explore the campus a bit. We checked out the IISc interconnect bridge, which links different parts of the campus. It was such a beautiful sight. Here's my point of view:

We sat down in front of a sports ground, and off in the distance, I could faintly see a trading firm. It’s a hazy memory now, but it felt serene at the moment.

Eventually, I felt tired and decided to head back to my room, while my friend stayed behind to hang out with an old friend who was pursuing her master’s at IISc.

And then, the adventure began—I got lost. The IISc campus is like a labyrinth, a tangled spiral of pathways. Instead of trying to figure it out on my own, I thought I'd be clever and take a shortcut by asking one of the guards for help. Unfortunately, the guard seemed just as confused as I was. He and his fellow guards exchanged a few words in Kannada, their local language. I waited patiently, letting them finish their conversation. A few seconds later, they gave me a straightforward answer: “Go straight, then left, and then straight.” That was all I needed! I followed their directions and finally reached my guest house.

I rushed in, jumped onto my bed, and fell asleep immediately. It was one of those deep, crazy sleeps. Surprisingly, I woke up on time, maybe because, for the first time in my life, I had actually gone to bed early!

The First Day of the Conference #

The highlight of my day was a brief but insightful conversation with Dr. Uday Reddy. We discussed Dataflow Compilers and Reconfigurable Architectures, specifically how to design compilers for these systems. The conversation only lasted a few minutes, but it was inspiring. It gave me the motivation to kickstart my networking journey for the conference.

I was ready, energized, and excited to make the most out of this experience!

Networking Time #

Let me try some South Indian flavors – looks delicious. “Hey, hi, I think I saw you sent me a LinkedIn request yesterday?”

Not a perfect icebreaker, but a valid question! I mean, I’m curious about what they have to say. Maybe it can be the start of something interesting that I hadn’t thought of before coming here.

Astronomy, Science, Engineering,

Artificial Intelligence (Of course), Python (Sadly, but of course),

Systems (Ahh, I’ve been waiting for this to enter our conversations, haha – after all, this conference is about the present and future of computing systems),

Philosophy (It always finds a way to enter my discussions in “weird ways”),

History (I don’t know how grateful I am for the people who write history textbooks – not evaluating how accurate they are, but the fact that people used to think in this or that way is kind of mind-blowing).

History doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but it does leave traces into the future, which can be easily backtraced to the starting point. Oh damn, did I just create an infinite loop? See, Physics is everywhere, so how could I miss it?

Interdisciplinary problems give me hope that humanity can progress uniformly, where technological advances will be accepted by society without any strange wars (not accounting for another nuclear war – but this time, it might be a quantum war! Thank you, Google, for your “technology and threats”).

Well, I know there are a lot of intellectual discussions going on above, but man, that’s what makes life worth it!

I’m being very subjective here with some "objective" interests. But let’s think of it this way: “What if tomorrow all computer scientists were gone? What would you study? EE?”

Systems Engineering – A discipline that was conquered at Bell Labs.

Systems engineering is fascinating not because it involves “jargon” – systems, systems, think in systems! (Wearing my marketing hat).

I’m sure William Shockley, Claude Shannon, and Gordon Moore wouldn’t have thought of systems engineering as the “next big thing” – like AI fans say (not that it’s 100% untrue). But let’s not keep this domain as a “fashion” – one that goes out of style (reminds me of those AsapSCIENCE high school times ;) ).

This world is a collective endeavor of multiple disciplines coming together to create a rational system that works when certain inputs are given, but the outputs vary. Why?

Most likely because of factors we are still figuring out – the fallacies in an environment known as fallacies in systems.

Solving these mysteries means solving these fallacies or finding the point of contact (wearing my debugging hat),

figuring out how to make components more independent, but also how to integrate them so that the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts (wearing my architect’s hat).

Thinking in Abstractions – Thinking in Your Own World #

How I used to think of computers four years ago is different from how I think about them now.

Presently, I think of computers as just another machine doing some computation, but the point is “how well it is doing”:

“I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers.” - Thomas Watson(IBM)

Haha, now adding some economical factors like cost (got this for 500 bucks. Wait. You got it for 20 bucks? How? Edge computing :) ) and human factors like accessibility (how will I ever access Tesla’s Dojo? I got no uncle working under Musk).

These thoughts took some time and digging. I was also expected to see a computer as just a computer – I could play games, run videos, listen to music, and do my homework. But these were just human abstractions. How normal humans think of computers is different from how systems engineers(yeah, they ain’t normal) think of computers. They can picture a raw datasheet of how individual parts were created and how they are mapped together, following an architecture – trying to describe the computer organization naively.

A kid’s brain is used to abstractions in daily life. Everywhere you go, the world you see is an abstracted version of a hidden, dirty, messy world that only a few witness (during their jobs ;) ). But it’s fun nevertheless. It’s like knowing the truth – it’s like I know the reality! You all are living in an illusion.

Kids need to start somewhere, so we give them Operating Systems 101.

Hold on! Let’s talk about something that is much closer to messy machines and yet follows abstract reality – Logic Gates.

The gatekeepers for all electrical and electronics engineers:

… these are the logical units that help you design complex circuits inside your computers – chips like RAM, ROM, and even your general processors like CPUs and parallel, superscalar processors!

Abstractions unlocked? Systems explored? Great. Now go design the future. Peace.