Alfred Z. Spector

Alfred Z. Spector

Co-Authors

Alfred joined Google in November of 2007 and is responsible for the research across Google and also a growing collection of special initiatives - typically projects with high strategic value to the company, but somewhat outside the mainstream of current products. Previously, Alfred was Vice President of Strategy and Technology IBM's Software Business, and prior to that, he was Vice President of Services and Software Research across IBM. He was also founder and CEO of Transarc Corporation, a pioneer in distributed transaction processing and wide area file systems, and was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in highly reliable, highly scalable distributed computing. Alfred received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford and his A.B. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM, and the recipient of the 2001 IEEE Computer Society's Tsutomu Kanai Award for work in scalable architectures and distributed systems.

Google Publications

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    Google's Hybrid Approach to Research

    Alfred Spector, Peter Norvig, Slav Petrov

    Communications of the ACM, vol. 55 Issue 7 (2012), pp. 34-37

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    Why we're able to Google

    Alfred Z. Spector

    Proceeding CRASS '09 Computing Research that Changed the World: Reflections and Perspectives, Computing Research Association, Washington, D.C. (2009)

Previous Publications

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    Toward a safer and more secure cyberspace

    Herbert S. Lin, Alfred Z. Spector, Peter G. Neumann, Seymour E. Goodman

    Communications of the ACM, vol. 50, no. 10 (2007), pp. 128

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    Technical context and cultural consequences of XML

    Sharon C. Adler, Roberta Cochrane, John F. Morar, Alfred Z. Spector

    IBM Systems Journal, vol. 45 (2006), pp. 207-224

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    Semantic Acceleration Helping Realize the Semantic Web Vision or

    Alfred Z. Spector

    International Semantic Web Conference (2005), pp. 4

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    Introduction

    Alfred Z. Spector, John Swainson, Daniel Sabbah

    IBM Systems Journal, vol. 43, no. 2 (2004)

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    Distributed Systems: Lessons Learned and Challenges Remaining

    Alfred Z. Spector

    ISADS (2003), pp. 3

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    The Conundrum of Distributed Computing

    Alfred Z. Spector

    ICDCS (2003), pp. 520-

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    Challenges and opportunities in autonomic computing

    Alfred Z. Spector

    ICS (2002), pp. 96-96

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    TP is TP Heavy

    Alfred Z. Spector

    HPTS (1993), pp. 0-

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    Camelot and Avalon: A Distributed Transaction Facility

    Jeffrey L. Eppinger, Lily B. Mummert, Alfred Z. Spector

    Morgan Kaufmann (1991)

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    Some Thoughts on Systems Challenges for the 1990s

    Alfred Z. Spector

    Operating Systems of the 90s and Beyond (1991), pp. 223-226

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    Modular Architectures for Distributed and Database Systems

    Alfred Z. Spector

    PODS (1989), pp. 217-224

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    Camelot: A Flexible Distributed Transaction Processing System

    Alfred Z. Spector, Randy F. Pausch, G. Bruell

    COMPCON (1988), pp. 432-439

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    A weighted voting algorithm for replicated directories

    Joshua J. Bloch, Dean S. Daniels, Alfred Z. Spector

    J. ACM, vol. 34 (1987), pp. 859-909

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    Distributed Logging for Transaction Processing

    Dean S. Daniels, Alfred Z. Spector, Dean S. Thompson

    SIGMOD Conference (1987), pp. 82-96

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    High Performance Distributed Transaction Processing in a General Purpose Computing Environment

    Alfred Z. Spector, Jeffrey L. Eppinger, Dean S. Daniels, Richard Draves, Joshua J. Bloch, Dan Duchamp, Randy F. Pausch, Dean S. Thompson

    HPTS (1987), pp. 220-242

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    An Algorithm for Replicated Directories

    Dean S. Daniels, Alfred Z. Spector

    Proceedings of the second annual ACM symposium on Principles of distributed computing (1986), pp. 24-43

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    Communication Support in Operating Systems for Distributed Transactions

    Alfred Z. Spector

    Networking in Open Systems (1986), pp. 313-324

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    TABS

    Alfred Z. Spector

    Fault-Tolerant Distributed Computing (1986), pp. 115-123

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    The Camelot Project

    Alfred Z. Spector, Joshua J. Bloch, Dean S. Daniels, Richard Draves, Dan Duchamp, Jeffrey L. Eppinger, Sherri G. Menees, Dean S. Thompson

    IEEE Database Eng. Bull., vol. 9 (1986), pp. 23-34

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    Thoughts on Large Distributed File Systems

    Alfred Z. Spector

    GI Jahrestagung (1) (1986), pp. 555-564

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    Distributed Transactions for Reliable Systems

    Alfred Z. Spector, Dean S. Daniels, Dan Duchamp, Jeffrey L. Eppinger, Randy F. Pausch

    SOSP (1985), pp. 127-146

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    Operating system support for transactions

    Alfred Z. Spector

    ACM SIGOPS European Workshop (1985), pp. 23-26

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    Performance Evaluation on Distributed Tansaction Facilities

    Alfred Z. Spector, Dean S. Daniels

    HPTS (1985), pp. 0-

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    The ITC Distributed File System: Principles and Design

    Mahadev Satyanarayanan, John H. Howard, David A. Nichols, Robert N. Sidebotham, Alfred Z. Spector, Michael J. West

    SOSP (1985), pp. 35-50

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    The TABS Projects

    Alfred Z. Spector

    Database Engineering, vol. 8 (1985), pp. 19-25

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    Case Study: IBM's System/360-370 Architecture

    Alfred Z. Spector, David K. Gifford

    Communications of the ACM, vol. 30 (1984), pp. 291-307

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    Support for Distributed Transactions in the TABS Prototype

    Alfred Z. Spector, Jacob Butcher, Dean S. Daniels, Daniel J. Duchamp, Jeffrey L. Eppinger, Charles E. Fineman, Abdelsalam Heddaya, Peter M. Schwarz

    Symposium on Reliability in Distributed Software and Database Systems (1984), pp. 186-206

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    Synchronizing Shared Abstract Types

    Peter M. Schwarz, Alfred Z. Spector

    ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, vol. 2 (1984), pp. 223-250

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    The Space Shuttle Primary Computer System

    David K. Gifford, Alfred Z. Spector

    Communications of the ACM, vol. 27 (1984), pp. 872-900

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    The TWA Reservation System

    David K. Gifford, Alfred Z. Spector

    Communications of the ACM, vol. 27 (1984), pp. 649-665

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    An Algorithm for Replicated Directories

    Dean S. Daniels, Alfred Z. Spector

    PODC (1983), pp. 104-113

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    Transactions: A Construct for Reliable Distributed Computing

    Alfred Z. Spector, Peter M. Schwarz

    ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, vol. 17 (1983), pp. 18-35

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    Performing Remote Operations Efficiently on a Local Computer Network

    Alfred Z. Spector

    Communications of the ACM, vol. 25 (1982), pp. 246-260

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    Extending Local Network Interfaces to Provide More Efficient Interprocessor Communication Facilities

    Alfred Z. Spector

    ACM Pacific (1980), pp. 6-13