Overview

The 13th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems will bring together innovative practitioners and researchers in computing systems, broadly construed. Continuing the HotOS tradition, participants will present and discuss new ideas about computer systems research and how technological advances and new applications are shaping our computational infrastructure.

Computing systems are expanding beyond the traditional roles on the desktop and datacenter: they now encompass a broad range of new technologies, including body-implantable embedded devices, complex networks inspired by biological principles, nanorobotic swarms, and massive-scale stream processing systems spanning multiple continents. At the same time the advent of cloud computing, ubiquitous wireless Internet access, and powerful mobile devices is ushering in a new era of network-centric computing. These new thrusts lead to tremendous open challenges for computer systems design for the next decade and beyond.

We solicit position papers of five or fewer pages that propose new directions of research, advocate non-traditional approaches, report on noteworthy actual experience in an emerging area, or generate lively discussion around an important topic. HotOS takes a broad view of systems, including operating systems, storage, networking, languages and language engineering, security, fault tolerance, and manageability. We are also interested in contributions influenced by other fields such as hardware design, machine learning, control theory, networking, economics, social organizations, and biological or other nontraditional computing systems.

To ensure a vigorous workshop environment, attendance is limited. Participants will be invited based on their submissions' originality, technical merit, topical relevance, and likelihood of leading to insightful technical discussions that will influence future systems research. Submissions may not be under consideration for any other venue. In order to promote discussion, the review process will heavily favor submissions that are forward-looking and open-ended, as opposed to those that summarize more mature work on the verge of conference publication. In general, at most two authors per accepted paper will be invited to the workshop.

Submitting a Paper

Position papers must be received by 11:59 p.m. EST on January 15, 2011. This is a hard deadline—no extensions will be granted.

Submissions must be no longer than 5 pages including figures, tables, and references. Text should be formatted in two columns on 8.5-inch by 11-inch paper using 10 point fonts on 12 point (single-spaced) leading, and 1-inch margins. Author names and affiliations should appear on the title page (reviewing is not blind). Pages should be numbered, and figures and tables should be legible in black and white without requiring magnification. Papers not meeting these criteria will be rejected without review, and no deadline extensions will be granted for reformatting.

Papers should be in PDF format and must be submitted via the Web submission form, which will be available here soon.

All papers will be available online to registered attendees before the workshop. If your accepted paper should not be published prior to the event, please notify production@usenix.org. The papers will be available online to everyone beginning on the first day of the workshop, May 8, 2011.

Simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, or plagiarism constitutes dishonesty or fraud. USENIX, like other scientific and technical conferences and journals, prohibits these practices and may take action against authors who have committed them. See the USENIX Conference Submissions Policy for details. Questions? Contact your program chair, hotos11chair@usenix.org, or the USENIX office, submissionspolicy@usenix.org.

Papers accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms will not be considered. Accepted submissions will be treated as confidential prior to publication on the USENIX HotOS XIII Web site; rejected submissions will be permanently treated as confidential.