In this demo we showcase efforts in MSR to collaborate with external researchers to explore the application of new technologies, specifically Dryad and DryadLINQ, to big data research problems in science. We also highlight our efforts to provide software and services to academics across the world, through the release of Dryad and DryadLINQ free of charge to the research community, along with associated programming guides, user documentation, and code libraries. Dryad is a general-purpose distributed computing engine, more flexible than MapReduce or Hadoop!, that was designed to simplify the task of implementing distributed applications on clusters of Windows computers. DryadLINQ is an abstraction layer which simplifies the process of implementing Dryad-based applications. Microsoft Research is acutely aware of the ubiquity of big data and the challenges this presents. We are offering researchers the tools, resources and collaboration to explore this new area.
DryadLINQ
Garibaldi Panorama on Surface
One of the things I think holds the most promise for Microsoft technologies like Deep Zoom, Photosynth, and multitouch, is the deep exploration of art and artifacts. It’s one thing to read about a place or device, but it’s another to be able to explore every facet of an object on your own.
Brown University has teamed together with Microsoft Research and created an application for Microsoft Surface that will be used as the centerpiece in an exhibition on the future of digital scholarship. In this exhibit, a five-foot tall, football-field-length print can be explored, magnified, annotated, and overlaid with other images and videos. This is an unprecedented way of exploring artifacts and a big step forward for digital curation.
Margus Veanes, a Researcher from the RiSE group at Microsoft Research, gives an overview of Rex, a tool that generates matching string from .NET regular expressions. Rex turns regular expressions into symbolic automatons, then gives them to a constraint solver to find matching strings.
- Download Rex and play with it!
The Research in Software Engineering team (RiSE) coordinates Microsoft’s research in Software Engineering in Redmond, USA.
Cloud Faster: Microsoft Research at TechFest 2010
To make cloud computing work, we must make applications run substantially faster, both over the Internet and within data centers. Microsoft Researchs measurements of real applications show that today’s protocols fall short, leading to slow page-load times across the Internet and congestion collapses inside the data center. Microsoft Research developed a new suite of architectures and protocols that boost performance and the robustness of communications to overcome these problems. The results are backed by real measurements and a new theory describing protocol dynamics that enables us to remedy fundamental problems in the Transmission Control Protocol.
The Verification Corner – Loop Termination
In this episode of The Verification Corner, Rustan Leino, Principal Researcher in the Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) group at Microsoft Research, shows how to prove loop termination. During his demonstration, Rustan presents the theoretical background information necessary to build the proof before modeling it using the Dafny language.
- Find past and future episodes of the The Verification Corner!
The Verification Corner is a show on Software Verification Techniques and Tools. The show is produced by the Research in Software Engineering team (RiSE), which coordinates Microsoft’s research in Software Engineering in Redmond, USA.
Coding 4 DNA
Andrew Phillips holds the title of Scientist with Microsoft Research Cambridge, and he’s working on a method of programming that compiles into DNA. Part of this involves a visual programming language called Stochastic Pi Machine, or SPiM. This system models biological processes to help give researchers feedback on how organisms will react to modifications.
The hope is that this can be used to help scientists program for large biological systems using modular components compiled to DNA. Yes, I’m in way over my head here, but I do my best to ask Andrew about the role this will play in medical treatment going forward, what it means to DNA computing, and the ability of back-engineering the genetic code we don’t use now.
As part of his MIX10 keynote presentation Bill Buxton showed off Project Gustav – an immersive digital painting experience created by Microsoft Research – as an example of natural user interface.
Previously covered on Channel 9 as part of the TechFest 2010 coverage we invited the Project Gustav guys back into the studio for a deeper dive into what they’ve built, why they chose to build it and what makes this experience so different from other tablet-based painting applications.
More on Project Gustav: Project Gustav is a realistic painting-system prototype that enables
artists to become immersed in the digital painting experience. It
achieves interactivity and realism by leveraging the computing power of
modern GPUs, taking full advantage of multitouch and tablet input
technology and our novel natural media-modeling and brush-simulation
algorithms. Project Gustav is a great example of how Microsoft’s
research efforts are leading to exciting new technologies to support
creativity.
This video originally aired during the Channel 9 Live at MIX10 Day 1
lunch break on March 15th 2010.
Today I’d like to introduce you to another piece of new technology from Microsoft Research Labs – Image Composite Editor (ICE) with Multi-Image Fusion. In the current version of ICE, it provides advanced features for panoramic stitching such as choosing the stitch’s orientation, custom projection, and selecting a 360 stitch’s mid-point, and this tool also integrates nicely as a plug-in into Windows Live Photo Gallery. Here we’ll show you some of the upcoming new features in ICE such as:
- Structured Panoramas
- Stitching Panoramas from Video
- Sharp Panoramas from Blurry Videos
- Creating Photographs from Videos
- Multi-Image Denoising and Sharpening using Lucky Imaging
Techfest 2010: Mobile Surface
Every year at TechFest, Microsoft employees (and a few invited guests) get to take a look at some of the projects out of Microsoft Research. These aren’t finished products–you’ll see a lot of exposed wires and tape–and in fact, they may never become completed products at all, but each project shows what we’re thinking–and maybe where we’re going.
This year I met with a team from MSR Asia who have constructed what they hope will eventually be a pico-projector portable computer, and in this project you can see inspiration from Microsoft Surface and Second Light. The possibility I like best about this is the ability to touch your games while still seeing what is there. Additionally, if you use physical controls on apps, such as knobs, you can actually paint labels on the controls themselves.
If you are developing multi-threaded applications, there is a possibility that you may be having concurrency problems, and these problems can be difficult to reproduce and identify.
At PDC09, Madan Musuvathi and Sebastian Burckhardt showed off some tools (“Cuzz” and “FeatherLite”) that Microsoft Research is currently working on that may one day assist developers in addressing concurrency issues they may be having in their application. I’ve invited them to join me today to talk with us about some of the issues involved with tracking down concurrency problems, as well as how each tool works.
If you’d like more information about the tools they are working on, you may want to check out their PDC09 session, which is available here:
You can also find more details about what Madan and Sebastian are doing in Microsoft Research on the Microsoft Research Website: