Distributed computing is becoming the norm, and this trend is driven largely by the computational requirements of machine learning applications. However, building distributed applications today requires tons of expertise.

Ray aims to make it as easy to program a cluster of machines as it is to program a laptop.

Speakers:

Ion Stoica

Ion Stoica is a Professor in the EECS Department at the University of California at Berkeley. He does research on cloud computing and networked computer systems. Past work includes Apache Spark, Apache Mesos, Tachyon, Chord DHT, and Dynamic Packet State (DPS).

He is an ACM Fellow and has received numerous awards, including the SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award (2015), the SIGCOMM Test of Time Award (2011), and the ACM doctoral dissertation award (2001).

In 2013, he co-founded Databricks a startup to commercialize technologies for Big Data processing, and in 2006 he co-founded Conviva, a startup to commercialize technologies for large-scale video distribution.