SystemsResearch@Google

SystemsResearch@Google is Google’s newest systems research team led by David Culler, former EECS Chair of UC Berkeley, and Hank Levy, former Head of the Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering at UW. The new team, embedded within Google’s software and hardware infrastructure organization, has a mission to shape the future of hyperscaler systems design for Google and its ecosystem.

SystemsResearch@Google

SystemsResearch@Google is Google’s newest systems research team led by David Culler, former EECS Chair of UC Berkeley, and Hank Levy, former Head of the Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering at UW. The new team, embedded within Google’s software and hardware infrastructure organization, has a mission to shape the future of hyperscaler systems design for Google and its ecosystem.

Organizational goals

  • Accelerate new product introduction through conceptualization, design, prototyping, and experimental introduction of new technologies and development of foundational methods.

  • Eliminate obstacles on the road map to our future and reduce friction of adoption.

  • Infuse unique, differentiating technologies and capabilities into current and future products.

  • Ignite completely new business opportunities.

Organizational goals

Areas of exploration

  • Datacenter-focused SoC Architectures

    Datacenter-focused SoC Architectures

  • Next-gen Cloud Memory subsystems

    Next-gen Cloud Memory subsystems

  • Terabit network systems

    Terabit network systems

  • Hyperscale Operating System structures

    Hyperscale Operating System structures

  • Machine Learning for Systems

    Machine Learning for Systems

  • Post-ML Databases and Analytics

    Post-ML Databases and Analytics

Q&A with the SystemsResearch@Google team

Let’s chat with the leaders of this new SR@G team to learn a little more about what this team does and what makes it unique.

Can you please explain what your team does?

Hank Levy

Our goal is to accelerate the invention and deployment of new technologies, looking beyond current products, to the next generation of hardware and software systems.

David Culler

The tagline is "Move forward farther, faster." We are here to accelerate the pace of systems (Platforms, Storage, Networking, etc.) at Google. In some ways, this is an exercise in time travel; We scout territory ahead of the product development. Our job is to imagine a technologically plausible future — one that is strategically important — and to create an approximation of that out of tech that already exists. Systems research is a constructive art. It’s about formulating new designs, concepts, architectures, and systems… And you have to build them to a degree to fully understand them.

What differentiates us from other systems companies?

Hank Levy

Our ability to influence the future of the hyperscale computer system that Google will deploy five to ten years from now.

David Culler

One advantage Google has is that it is both horizontal and vertical. Google is discovering both vertical opportunities (specialization) and horizontal opportunities (generalization). Google’s innovation came with this vertical integration, at scale. You have all these layers that reach people around the world and you have large projects at each of the layers. The tech challenges manifest themselves every day at Google. Secondly, Google is progressive in its role at societal challenges. To achieve what Google has done in sustainability — to operate net zero on renewable sources, to get to the stated goal of 24/7 carbon-free energy — is a fundamental technological challenge. This is not only important for Google but also allows others to figure out how to do it for themselves.

You were both professors. What made you want to come to Google?

Hank Levy

If you work in computer systems, it can be difficult to fully understand cloud computing unless you see it from the inside. The real-world requirements of global scale, extreme reliability, fault tolerance, security and privacy, plus the exponential growth of data and demand for machine learning ... That’s really unique and amazing to see close up.

David Culler

I realized that there are really only two ways to have an impact in this next stage of my life: Either you go the startup route, where you fundamentally change the rules, or you work at one of the very few companies that essentially touch the whole world’s population.

Why would a recent grad want to work at Google?

Hank Levy

The scale and variety of tech that’s being developed. We have everything from Pixel and Chromebooks to the global infrastructure that runs Google Cloud, like YouTube, Search, Maps, Docs, etc. Those run on hardware and software systems that we produce. Being at Google gives you an opportunity to see, use, and influence the future of technology.

David Culler

An amazing part of the journey is the people you meet. So many of the people who were leading thinkers in important developments over the last 40 years are here. The brain trust is just amazing.

What makes you excited about your work today?

Hank Levy

The challenge. Users upload hundreds of hours of video per minute to YouTube. That’s a huge number of bits that need to be processed in different ways, stored in different resolutions, and prepared for simultaneous viewing by millions of users, on hundreds of types of devices. Similarly, if we look at the number of search queries, it is astronomical. How do we do that? Think about the enormous computing facility we have to build to support that. It’s exciting to see these systems, but the future of global-scale applications and Google Cloud will be even more exciting and challenging.

David Culler

In the hardware tiers, challenges play out in concrete ways. But in all the system software layers, it plays out in similar but very complicated ways. The world has an axiomatic system and we construct larger and larger engineering apparatuses on top of the building blocks. In a biological system, we are always evolving. Google is like the latter; it’s an ecosystem. So many of the challenges and design solutions are interacting with each other, over all of these different time scales.