CONTACT

Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC)7001 Heritage Village Plaza, Suite 225Gainesville, VA 20155, USA

SPEC Research GroupChair: Samuel Kounev (rgchair@spec.org)Web: http://research.spec.org

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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE 2 SPECResearchGroupOfficers2 SPECResearchWorkingGroups3 ForewordfromChairsandEditors3 SPECResearchGroupMissionStatement3 SPECAnnouncements5 NewWorkingGroup:BigData5 NewWorkingGroup:DevOpsPerformance6 Report:IDSBenchmarkingWorkingGroup6 Over130AttendeesatICPE20147 Winner of the SPEC Distinguished Dissertation

Award20147 SPECRGFace-to-faceMeeting,Dublin20148 SPECtacularAwards2014

NEW WORKING GROUPS SPEC Research has two new working groups,

namely Big Data working group and DevOpsPerformance working group. The chairs of the newworkinggroupsinvitenewmembersandarehappytopresenttheirgroups.

Read more on page 5

ICPE 2016 WILL BE HELD IN DELFT, THE NETHERLANDS

Alexandru Iosup, the General Chair of the nextACM/SPEC InternationalConference onPerformanceEngineering (ICPE 2016), invites interesting high-qualitysubmissions.Theconferencewill takeplace inMarch2016.

Read more on page 3

NADAV AMIT WINS THE DISTINGUISHED DISSERTATION AWARD

Among eleven high-quality dissertations that havebeensubmittedtocompeteintheSPECDistinguishedDissertation Award, the committee awarded NadavAmit for his work on contemporary operating systemvirtualization techniques. The authors of two otherdissertations have been distinguished with honorablymentions.

Read more on page 7

SUCCESSFUL CONFERENCE IN DUBLIN Over 130 participants took part in the 5th ACM/

SPEC International Conference on PerformanceEngineering in Dublin. The committee accepted 29high-qualitypapersand26postersandtutorials.

Read more on page 6

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SPEC ResearchSM Group Newsletter

Volume 1, Issue 4 January 2015

℠Research

SPEC, the SPEC logo and the names SPECpower_ssj2008, SPECapc, SPECviewoperf, SPECapc, SPECjbb®2013, SPECwpc, SPECvirt_sc, SERT, and SPEC PTDaemon are trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. The SPEC Research Logo and the name SPEC Research are service marks of SPEC. Additional company, product and service names mentioned herein may be the trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Copyright © 1988-2015 Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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SPEC RESEARCH GROUP OFFICERS Chair: Samuel Kounev, University of Würzburg, Germany, rgchair@spec.org Vice-chair: Kai Sachs, SAP AG, Germany Secretary: Klaus-Dieter Lange, HP, USA Release Manager: Qais Noorshams, KIT, Germany Steering committee: J. Nelson Amaral, University of Alberta, Canada André van Hoorn, University of Stuttgart, Germany Alexandru Iosup, TU Delft, The Netherlands Lizy John, University of Texas at Austin, USA Samuel Kounev, University of Würzburg, Germany Klaus-Dieter Lange, HP, USA Meikel Poess, Oracle Corporation, USA Kai Sachs, SAP AG, Germany Seetharami R. Seelam, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, USA Petr Tůma, Charles University of Prague, Czech Republic Publicity Officer: André van Hoorn, University of Stuttgart, Germany Newsletter Editor: Piotr Rygielski, University of Würzburg, Germany

SPEC RESEARCH WORKING GROUPS Cloud Working Group

Chair: Alexandru Iosup, TU Delft, The Netherlands Vice-Chair: Erich Nahum, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, USA Secretary: Aleksandar Milenkoski, University of Würzburg, Germany Release Manager: Nikolas Herbst, University of Würzburg, Germany http://research.spec.org/working-groups/rg-cloud-working-group.html

IDS Benchmarking Working GroupChair: Marco Vieira, University of Coimbra, Portugal Vice-Chair: Alberto Avritzer, Siemens Corporate Research, USA Secretary: Aleksandar Milenkoski, University of Würzburg, Germany Release Manager: Aleksandar Milenkoski, University of Würzburg, Germany http://research.spec.org/working-groups/ids-benchmarking-working-group.html

Big Data Working GroupChair: Tilmann Rabl, Bankmark UG, GermanyVice-Chair: Chaitanya Baru, San Diego Supercomputer Center, USASecretary: Meikel Poess, Oracle Corporation, USARelease Manager: Not selected yethttp://research.spec.org/working-groups/big-data-working-group.html

DevOps Performance Working GroupChair: André van Hoorn, University of Stuttgart, Germany Vice-Chair: Andreas Brunnert, fortiss GmbHSecretary: Felix Willnecker, fortiss GmbHRelease Manager: Nils Ehmke, Kiel University

http://research.spec.org/working-groups/devops-performance-working-group.html

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WELCOME TO THE SPEC RESEARCH GROUP NEWSLETTER

We are delighted to present to you the 4th is-sue of the SPEC Research Group Newsletter. Thisregular publication provides information on latest de-velopments, news and announcements relevant tothe benchmarking and quantitative system evalua-tion communities. Our newsletter is part of our mis-sion to foster the exchange of knowledge and ex-periences between industry and academia in thefield of quantitative system evaluation and analysis.

Thepasttenmonthshavebeenveryintenseandex-citingfortheSPECRG.Tothemajoractivitiesandmile-stonesreached,weinclude:launchingtwonewworkinggroups:BigDataandDevOpsPerformance, intensivecollaboration between academia and industry withintheCloudandIDSBenchmarkingworkinggroups,suc-cessfullorganizationofICPE2014inDublinandprep-arationof the ICPE2015 inAustin,TX,andawardingNadavAmitwiththeDistinguishedDissertationAward.

We have been actively working on preparation,planning and organization of the ICPE 2015 confer-ence.We hope that the vivid exchange of ideas dur-ingtheupcomingICPE2015willbeagreatmotivationfor the next year of scientific and engineering work.

This issue of the Newsletter is the last issue ofthe first volume. We hope that you will enjoy read-ing it. We welcome and encourage your contribu-tions forarticlesandsuggestions for future coverage.

Samuel Kounev (University of Würzburg), Kai Sachs (SAP AG), Piotr Rygielski (University of Würzburg)

SPEC RESEARCH GROUP MISSION STATEMENT

The SPEC Research Group (RG) is one of thefour groups of the Standard Performance Evalua-tion Corporation (SPEC). Its mission is to promoteinnovative research in the area of quantitative sys-temevaluation and analysis by serving as a platformfor collaborative research efforts fostering the inter-action between industry and academia in the field.

The scopeof the group includes computer bench-marking, performance evaluation, and experimentalsystemanalysisconsideringbothclassicalperformancemetricssuchas response time, throughput,scalabilityandefficiency,aswell asothernon-functional systemproperties includedunder the termdependability,e.g.,availability, reliability, and security. The conducted re-search efforts span the design of metrics for system

SPEC ANNOUNCEMENTS

ICPE 2016 in Delft, the Netherlands January 27,.2015

WepreliminarilyannouncethatICPE2016willtakeplaceon12–18ofMarch,2016inDelft,theNetherlands.The deadline for submissions is September 18, 2015(for abstracts: September 11, 2015).Alexandru IosupfromTUDelftwillbetheGeneralChair.ProgramChairsare Lieven Eeckhout (University of Ghent, Belgium)andSteffenBecker(TUChemnitz,Germany).Weawaityoursubmissions!

Piotr Rygielski (University of Würzburg) , Alexandru Iosup(TU Delft)

Samuel Kounev gives Keynote at QEST 2014January 20, 2015

The keynote was presented by Samuel Kounevon September 10th as part of the programme ofFLORENCE2014–a jointscientificeventofQEST’14,SAFECOMP’14, FORMATS’14, EPEW’14, andFMICS’14. The talk entitled: “Quantitative Evaluationof Service Dependability in Shared ExecutionEnvironments“isavailableonline.

http://se.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/news/single/artikel/keynote-pr-1/

Piotr Rygielski (University of Würzburg)

Alexandu Iosup Awarded!January 20, 2015

The chair of the CloudWorking Group–AlexandruIosup(TUDelft)–hasbeenawardedattheSCALEchal-lenge.“SCALEisacompetitioninwhichtheparticipantsdemonstrateworking solutions to real-world problemsthatrelyonlargescalecomputing.Competitorssubmitproposals in advance that outline the nature of theproblemtobesolved,thesolutiontechnique,anddocu-mentthescaleachievedinproduction.”(www.ieeetcsc.org/awards/scale). The prize was handed out at theCCGrid2014conference.Congratulations!

Piotr Rygielski (University of Würzburg)

evaluation aswell as the development ofmethodolo-gies,techniquesandtoolsformeasurement,loadtest-ing, profiling, workload characterization, dependabil-ity and efficiency evaluation of computing systems.

Samuel Kounev (University of Würzburg)

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SPECapc for 3ds Max 2015August13,2014

SPECapc has released SPECapc for 3ds Max™2015.Thebenchmarkcontains48testsforcomprehen-sive measurement of modeling, interactive graphics,visualeffects,CPUandGPUperformance.Itiscurrent-ly available for download and purchase, and requires64-bit Windows 7, 16GB of memory, and a workingcopyof3dsMax2015withServicePack1applied.

www.spec.org

SPEC GWPG’s Benchmark RoadmapAugust 14, 2014

SPEC’s GWPG (Graphics and WorkstationPerformance Group) announced their benchmarkroadmap for upcoming development, including a newstrategy for SPECviewperf, upcoming workstationperformance measurement initiatives, and plans forupdatedapplicationbenchmarks.

http://spec.org/gwpg/publish/siggraph2015_rel.html

www.spec.org

SPEC SFS®2014November 04, 2014

SPECannouncesthereleaseofSPECSFS®2014,SPEC’supdatedbenchmarksuitetomeasureperform-anceofastorageconfigurationasitinteractswithfournewapplication-basedworkloads.

http://spec.org/sfs2014/

www.spec.org

Defect in SPECjbb®2013December 9, 2014

Adefecthasbeen identified in theSPECjbb®2013benchmark suite which impacts the comparability ofresults.Salesofthebenchmarkhavebeensuspendedand we are no longer accepting new submissions ofSPECjbb2013resultsforpublicationontheSPECweb-site. The Java subcommittee isworking to revise thebenchmarktocorrectthisdefect,addadditionalvalida-tionsafeguards,andreleaseanewversionassoonaspossible.Current licenseeswill receivea freecopyofthenewversionwhenitbecomesavailable.

http://spec.org/jbb2013/defectnotice.html

www.spec.org

SERT V1.1.0 Due to Release ShortlyJanuary 24, 2015

SERT V1.1.0 is at the Release Candidate stageandwillbereleased in the firsthalfof2015.This isasignificantupdate,addingsupportforOracleSolaris11runningonSPARC64andSPARCT4aswellas Intelx86.Theuserinterfacehasbeenenhancedtosimplifytestconfiguration,automatedrangesettingsupporthasbeen added, and it has been further tuned to deliversuccessful test passes with a wider range of serverconfigurations. Current licensees will be entitled to afreeupgradepost-release.

Klaus-Dieter Lange (Hewlett-Packard)

PTDaemon V1.7.1 Due to Release with SERT V1.1.0January 24, 2015

An updated release of PTDaemon, V1.7.1, is cur-rently inBetaand is scheduled to releasewithSERTV1.1.0. This release will add support for additionalpoweranalyzers,andenablesDCpowermeasurementwithmanyofthoseanalyzers.Fulldetailsmaybefoundon the SPECpower Device List page on the SPECwebsite.

Sanjay Sharma (Intel)

Chauffeur Worklet Development Kit V1.0.4 Released January 24, 2015

TheChauffeurWorkletDevelopmentKitwasinitiallyreleased in 2014 as a platform to support energy ef-ficiency benchmark development. Chauffeur is anintegral part of theSERT and shipswith PTDaemon,soenablinganydevelopertoexecutesingleormultipleworkloads with SPEC-accepted power analyzers andtemperature sensors. The Chauffeur WDK may bepurchasedviatheOrderpageontheSPECwebsite.

Mike Tricker (Microsoft)

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NEW WORKING GROUP: BIG DATANovember 19, 2014

Withoutanydoubttheworldhasbeeninthemidstofanextraordinaryinformationexplosionoverthepastdecade,punctuatedby the rapidgrowth in theuseofthe Internet and in the number of connected devicesworldwide. The data growth phenomenon is globalinnature,withAsia rapidlyemergingasamajoruserbase contributing to both consumption as well asgenerationofdata.Indeed,therateatwhichdataandinformation are being generated is faster than at anypoint throughouthistory.With thepenetrationofdata-driven computing, web and mobile technologies, andenterprisecomputing, theemergingmarketshave thepotentialforfurtheraddingtothisalreadyrapidgrowthin data.Data fromall sources—fromenterprise appli-cations tomachine-generateddata—continue to growexponentially, requiring thedevelopmentof innovativetechniquesfordatamanagement,dataprocessing,andanalytics.

Realizing the lack of methodologies and tools tomeasuretheperformanceofthesenewdataprocessingtools,ChaitanBaru,TilmannRabl,MilindBhandarkar,Meikel Poess and Raghu Nambiar founded the BigDataBenchmarkCommunity(BDBC)in2012.Inordertocongregatethebigdatacommunity,bothacademiaand industry, theyorganized theWBDBworkshopse-ries.ItwaskickedoffinMay2012inSanJose,CAandfollowedupwith threeworkshops in India,ChinaandGermany. Between meetings, bi-weekly conferencecallswereheldtopresentbigdatasolutionsandideasforbenchmarkingthem.

Many ideas, born in the Big Data BenchmarkCommunityhavebeensolidified,suchasthefirstend-to-end big data benchmark, BigBench 1.0, BigDataTop100, accompanied bymany papers inwell knownconferences,suchasSIGMODandTPCTC.

InApril 2014 theBigDataBenchmarkCommunity(BDBC) joined the SPEC RG and formed a workinggrouptocontinueitsworkinthemoreformalsettingofSPEC.Themissionof theBigDataWorkingGroup istofacilitateresearchandtoengageindustryleadersfordefininganddevelopingperformancemethodologiesofbig data applications.Thegroup currently focusesonpositioningbigdataapplicationsinrelationtotraditionallargedatabaseapplications,DW,OLAP,etc.,devisingcleargoalsastowhataspectsofabigdatasystemareimportanttomeasure,developingsoundrulesandmet-rics tomeasure theperformanceofbigdatasystems.developingtoolsaidingincreatingsamplebigdatasys-tems,fosteringcollaborationbetweenbenchmarkingef-fortsandfillinggapsincurrentbigdatabenchmarking.

Tilmann Rabl (Bankmark UG)

NEW WORKING GROUP: DEVOPS PERFORMANCE

November 04, 2014

The newly formed working group is concernedwith combining application performance management(APM) and software performance engineering (SPE)activities forbusiness-criticalapplicationsystems.TheneedforabetterSPE/APMintegrationisdrivenbyanincreased interrelation of development and operationteams incorporateenvironmentsduetoDevOpscon-cepts.SPEproposestostartperformanceevaluationsby transforming software design models into perfor-mancemodels.Theseperformancemodelsneedtobeparameterizedwithestimatesof resourcedemands toderive meaningful predictions. APM tools enable thecollection of fine-grained monitoring information of arunning system. This monitoring information has thepotential to significantly increase the accuracy of theperformance model predictions during the completelife-cycleofasoftwaresystem.

The DevOps Performance Working Group fostersand facilitates research in combining APM and SPEactivities, e.g., by experience sharing, agreement ondefinitions, specificationofmetrics,anddisseminationofnovelmethods,techniques,andtoolsforquantitativeevaluation.TopicsofInterestinclude,butarenotlimitedto, performance and workloadmodel extraction, datafeedbackbetweendevelopment (Dev) andoperations(Ops), runtime performancemanagement techniques,load testing,benchmarks forSPEandAPMmethods,techniques,andtools.

Since June, the groupmeets on a biweekly basistodiscusscurrentactivitiesandnewproject ideas. Itsmembership body currently includes representativesof fortissGmbH,KielUniversity,Karlsruhe InstituteofTechnology, NovaTec GmbH, University of Stuttgart,andUniversityofWürzburg.

For more information about the DevOpsPerformanceWorkingGroup,(includingmission,activi-ties,meetings,andpresentations)visitourwebpage.Ifyouareinterestedinfollowingthediscussionsorcon-tributingactively,pleaseget in touchwith theworkinggroupchairs.

http://research.spec.org/working-groups/devops-performance-working-group/

André van Hoorn (University of Stuttgart), Andreas Brunnert (fortiss GmbH)

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OVER 130 ATTENDEES AT ICPE 2014April 1, 2014

Over 130 participants from industry and academiaattended the5thACM/SPECInternationalConferenceon Performance Engineering (ICPE 2014) in Dublin,Ireland.Thetechnicalprogramincluded14fullresearchpapers,2shortpapers,7industrial/experiencepapers,and6work-in-progresspapersselectedfrom100sub-missionsoverall tracks(paperacceptancerate27%).The conference also featured 3 keynotes, 20 poster/demo presentations, and 6 tutorials. Many thanks tothe conference chairs, JohnMurphyandKlaus-DieterLange,andtheirteamwhodidanexcellentjobinorga-nizingtheconference!

Asusual,bestresearchpaperand industrypaperswereawarded.Likelastyear,thebestpapercandidateswereannouncedbeforeintheprogramandpresentedtheir work in dedicated slots. For the first time, thepresentationhasbeen taken intoaccount for the finaldecision: all participantsattending the candidate talkswereaskedtoevaluatethetalksbasedonaquestion-naire.Thewinnersofthebestpapersare:

• Research papers: Peter Libič, Lubomír Bulej,Vojtěch Horky, Petr Tůma. “On the limits ofmodeling generational garbage collectorperformance.”

• Industry/experiencepapers:JianbinFang,HenkSips,LiLunZhang,ChuanfuXu,YonggangChe,AnaLuciaVarbanescu.“Test-drivingIntelXeonPhi.”

After their best student research paper award atICPE2012,SPECRGsteeringcommitteememberPetrTůmaandhisteamwererecognizedwithanICPEbestawardalreadyforthesecondtime–congratulations!

The conference co-located two workshops,International Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud ser-vice Scalability (HotTopiCS 2014) and InternationalWorkshoponLargeScaleTesting (LT2014). For theHotTopiCS workshop, it was the second edition aftertheinitialworkshopco-locatedwithICPE2013.Forthe

REPORT: IDS BENCHMARKING WORKING GROUP

November 04, 2014

TheSPECRG IDSBenchmarkingWorkingGroupsuccessfullyconcluded itsagenda for2014and faces2015witharenewedcommitment.In2014,theWorkingGroup further established its research agendahavingseveralworkspublished.

TheSPECRG IDSBenchmarkingWorkingGrouphas completed a field study on vulnerabilities of hy-percalls handlers. Hypercalls enable intrusions in hy-pervisorsthroughtheirhypercall interfaces.InapaperpublishedatISSRE2015(The25thIEEEInternationalSymposium on Software Reliability Engineering) [1]wecharacterizethehypercallattacksurfacebasedonanalyzing 35 vulnerabilities of hypercall handlers.Wesystematize and discuss the errors that caused theconsidered vulnerabilities, and activities for executingattacks triggering them.Wealso demonstrate attackstriggering the considered vulnerabilities and analyzetheir effects. Finally, we suggest an action plan forimprovingthesecurityofhypercallinterfaces.

In the technical report SPEC-RG-2014-001 pub-lished by the SPEC RG IDS Benchmarking WorkingGroup[2],weprovidein-depthtechnicalinformationonpubliclydisclosedvulnerabilitiesofhypercallhandlers.Foreachanalyzedvulnerability,weprovidebackgroundinformationessential forunderstanding thevulnerabil-ity,andinformationonthevulnerablehypercallhandlerand theerror causing the vulnerability.Wealso showhowthevulnerabilitycanbetriggeredanddiscussthestate of the targeted hypervisor after the vulnerabilityhasbeentriggered.

TheSPECRG IDSBenchmarkingWorkingGrouphas published the first version of HInjector, a tool forinjectinghypercallattacks.Theinjectionofhypercallat-tacksisperformedwithrespecttohypercallattackmod-els,whichweconstructedbysystematisingactivitiesforexecuting attacks triggering hypercall vulnerabilities.HInjector can be used for generating workloads thatcontainhypercallattacksforthepurposeofevaluatingintrusiondetectionsystems.HInjector ispubliclyavail-ableonline.

As futurework, theWorkingGroupplansondefin-ing metrics that take into consideration on-demandresourceprovisioninginvirtualizedenvironments(e.g.,CPUandmemoryhotplugging,memoryballooning).

[1] Aleksandar Milenkoski, Bryan D. Payne, Nuno Antunes, Marco Vieira, and Samuel Kounev. Experience Report: An Analy-sis of Hypercall Handler Vulnerabilities. In Proceedings of The 25th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engi-neering (ISSRE 2014)–Research Track, Naples, Italy, November 2014. IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, Washington DC, USA. No-vember 2014, Acceptance Rate: 25%.

[2] Aleksandar Milenkoski, Marco Vieira, Bryan D. Payne, Nuno Antunes, and Samuel Kounev. Technical Information on Vulnerabilities of Hypercall Handlers. Technical Report SPEC-RG-2014-001 v.1.0, SPEC Research Group–IDS Benchmarking Working Group, Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC), 7001 Heritage Village Plaza Suite 225, Gainesville, VA 20155, USA, August 2014.

http://research.spec.org/working-groups/ids-benchmarking-working-group.html

https://github.com/hinj/hinjector

Aleksandar Milenkoski (University of Würzburg), Marco Vieira (Uni-versity of Coimbra), Nuno Antunes (University of Coimbra), Alberto

Avritzer (Siemens Corporate Research, USA)

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SPEC RG FACE-TO-FACE MEETING, DUBLIN 2014

April 1, 2014

Over40RGmemberrepresentativesfromindustryand academia as well as additional interested ICPEparticipantsattendedthisyear’sRGface-to-facemeet-ing inDublin, Irelandrightafter theconference’smainprogram.Forthefourthtime,theRG’sannualmeetingwas co-locatedwith the ICPE conference.Themeet-ing started with an introductory talk by the RG chair,SamKounev, whowelcomed the attendees, gave an

WINNER OF THE SPEC DISTINGUISHED DISSERTATION AWARD 2014

January 12, 2015

The SPEC Distinguished Dissertation Award isan annual award that aims to recognize outstandingdoctoral dissertations within the scope of the SPECResearch Group in terms of scientific originality, sci-entific significance, practical relevance, impact, andpresentation. This year, the award committee consid-ered11excellent thesissubmissions fromuniversitiesaroundtheworld–AuburnUniversity,BrownUniversity,Caltech,CollegeofWilliamandMary,GhentUniversity,Indian Institute of Science, Technion, University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Kiel,UniversityofPennsylvaniaandVirginiaTech.

The winning thesis of Nadav Amit, nominated byprofessor DanTsafrir, deals with technical issues en-counteredincontemporaryoperatingsystemvirtualiza-tiontechniques.Thecommitteeparticularlyappreciatesthedeep insightandthe immediateapplicationpoten-tial,coupledwithcarefulpresentation.TheawardistobehandedoverattheICPE2015ConferenceinAustin,Texas.

In addition to selecting the winner, the committeedecided to recognize two theseswithhonorablemen-tions.ThesearethethesesofZhenhuaLiu,nominated

LT workshop, it was the third edition–but for the firsttimeitwasco-locatedwithICPE.

Also co-located with the conference were variousSPEC meetings, welcoming interested participantsoutside SPEC. The SPEC meeting included the an-nualmeetingsoftheSPECRGandits–atthattime–twoworkinggroups,CloudandIDS.

AndrévanHoorn(UniversityofStuttgart)

byprofessorAdamWiermanofCaltech,forthecontri-bution to sustainable data center management tech-niques, and Zhuoyao Zhang, nominated by professorBoonThauLooofUniversity ofPennsylvania, for theworkonperformanceofmapreduceframeworks.

Theawardselectioncommitteefor2014:• WalterBinder,UniversityofLugano,Switzerland• AndrewBond,RedHat,USA• Klaus-DieterLange,HP,USA• RaffaelaMirandola,PolitecnicodiMilano,Italy• MeikelPoess,Oracle,USA• SameerShende,UniversityofOregon,USA• CloyceSpradling,Oracle,USA• PetrTuma,CharlesUniversity,CzechRepublic• JanVitek,NortheasternUniversityandPurdue

University,USA.The SPEC Distinguished Dissertation Award was

established in2011torecognizeoutstandingdisserta-tions within the scope of the SPEC Research Groupin terms of scientific originality, scientific significance,practicalrelevance,impact,andqualityofthepresenta-tion.ThescopeofSPEC’sResearchGroupincludes

Petr Tůma, (Charles University of Prague), research.spec.org

  Face-to-face meeting of SPEC Research during ICPE 2014 in Dublin.

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Samuel Kounev (University of Würzburg) receives the SPEC Presidential Award from the SPEC President Walter Bays (right).

Aleksandar Milenkoski (University of Würzburg) receives the award.

SPEC AWARDS 2014April 1, 2014

During SPEC’s 2014 Yearly Meeting inDublin(Ireland), RG members Samuel Kounev,Alexandru Iosup, Aleksandar Milenkoski, and PetrTumawererecognizedbytheSPECPresidentfortheiroutstandingservicetoSPECin2014.

Samuel Kounev (University of Würzburg) wasawarded with the SPEC 2014 PresidentialAward for“Excellence in Research” recognizing long-lastingcontributions to the field of performance evaluationandbenchmarkingofcomputingsystemsoverthepastdecade.

TheSPECtacularawardwaspresentedtoAlexandruIosup(TUDelft) forcreationof theRGCloudworkinggroup.AleksandarMilenkoski(UniversityofWürzburg)receivedanaward forhis “Technical Leadership” rec-ognizing outstanding contributions and service to the

overviewabouttheRGscopeandactivities,andbrieflyreviewedtheachievementsofthelastyear.Thechairsof theCloud and IDSBenchmarkingworking groups,AlexIosupandMarcoVieira,introducedandreviewedtheir groups’ activities. Moreover, Meikel Poess pre-sentedthecurrentstatusonthenewworkinggrouponbigdatatobeannouncedsoon.EighttechnicaltalksbyRGmemberscompletedthemeetingandprovidedthebasisforfurthervividdiscussions:

• J Nelson Amaral: The Data Set Dimension:Supplementary Inputs for SPEC CPUBenchmarks to Enable Feedback-DirectedOptimizationResearch

• Nikolas Herbst and Joakim von Kistowski:LIMBO–A Tool For Modeling Variable LoadIntensities

• Nikolas Herbst and Andreas Weber: Towardsa Resource Elasticity Benchmark for CloudEnvironments

• Alexandru Iosup: Update on “Cloud UsagePatterns–AFormalism forDescriptionofCloudUsageScenarios”

• Qais Noorshams: Storage PerformanceAnalyzer (SPA)–A framework for performanceevaluationofstoragesystems

• Nuno Antunes: Benchmarking of vulnerabilitydetectiontoolsforwebservices

• Aleksandar Milenkoski: On benchmarkingintrusion detection systems in virtualizedenvironments

InadditiontotheRG’sannualmeeting,bothworkinggroups held separate meetings on the next day with

additionaltalksanddiscussions.Moreover, the SPEC Distinguished Dissertation

Awardwaspresentedduringtheconference.Thewin-ner wasAnshul Gandhi who received the prize fromSPECpresidentWalterBaysandtooktheopportunitytopresenthisworktotheICPEaudience.

André van Hoorn (University of Stuttgart)

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Participants of the SPEC dinner await the SPECtacular members to be awarded.

Petr Tůma, (Charles University of Prague) and Walter Bays. Alexandru Iosup (TU Delft) receives the award and congratulations from SPEC President Walter Bays.

RGCloudandRG IDS (IntrusionDetectionSystems)Working Groups in 2013. In addition, Petr Tuma(Charles University of Prague) was recognized bySPEC President for his accomplishments asGeneralChairofICPE2013.Congratulations!

Piotr Rygielski (University of Würzburg), Walter Bays (Oracle), Klaus-Dieter Lange (HP, USA), Photographs: David Reiner (AMD)