# My Favorite Bits of OSDI/ATC'23

DevFeed: [My Favorite Bits of OSDI/ATC'23](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/my-favorite-bits-of-osdi-atc-23-12541.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://brooker.co.za/blog/2023/07/13/osdi.html>)

Author: Marc Brooker

Published: 2023-07-13T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Marc Brooker's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/marc-brooker-s-blog.md>), [Marc Brooker's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/marc-brooker-s-blog-2.md>)

Topics: [Rust](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/rust.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>), [Firecracker](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/firecracker.md>), [Memory Safety](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/memory-safety.md>), [Security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/security.md>), [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/distributed-systems.md>), [Serverless](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/serverless.md>)

Tags: [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed-systems.md>), [firecracker](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/firecracker.md>), [memory-safety](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/memory-safety.md>), [rust](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rust.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>), [serverless](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/serverless.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/systems.md>)

## AI overview

An opinion piece about OSDI'23 and USENIX ATC'23 discusses the growing use of Rust in systems research, memory safety becoming standard practice, metastability in distributed systems, increased attention to security issues such as timing side-channels, and research on cloning and snapshot safety for serverless workloads.

## Source excerpt

My Favorite Bits of OSDI/ATC'23 Talking to 3D people is cool again. This week brought USENIX ATC'23 and OSDI'23 together in Boston. While I've followed OSDI and ATC papers for years, it's the first time I've been to either of them (I've have been to NSDI a couple times). It was a really good time. In this post I'll cover a couple of my favorite papers1, and trends I noticed. Overall, it was great to meet a bunch of folks in person who I've only interacted with online, and nice to be back to in-person conferences. Thoughts and Trends When we presented the Firecracker paper at NSDI'20, several people said to me that they were worried about the fact we had chosen Rust, because it raised the risk that Firecracker wouldn't be useful once Rust was no longer in vogue. This year at OSDI, pretty much everybody I talked to was building in Rust. Obvious exceptions are folks doing AI/ML work (Python still seems big there), and folks looking to get into the mainline Linux kernel. I couldn't be more happy to see memory safety start to become the default practice in systems. Loads of folks were talking about emergent system properties like metastability. Unfortunately, not a lot of folks seem to be writing papers about it, or getting grants to work on it. I did talk to a couple folks with upcoming papers, and I really hope the hallway interest turns into more publications. Metastable failures in distributed systems and Metastable Failures in the Wild are some of the most important systems work of the last few years, in my opinion. There's a lot more to do here. I got a rough feeling that more papers were paying more attention to security issues than in years past. Subtle issues like timing side-channels especially. Another trend I like to see. Security and systems have always been linked, so this isn't new, but there does seem to be a reduction in completely security-naive work. Some of the Papers I Enjoyed The Most Take Out the Trache by Audrey Cheng et al2. This paper makes an a