JPL's Wireless Communication Reference Website

Chapter: Authors and Contributors


Randy H. Katz

Professor, Computer Science Division, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
Room 637 Soda Hall
510-642-8778 (phone), 510-642-5775 (fax)
randy@cs.Berkeley.edu

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1980.
M.S., University of California, Berkeley, 1978.
A. B., Cornell University, 1976.

Randy Katz received his Ph.D. at Berkeley under Prof. Eugene Wong, working on database design and translation within the Ingres Relational Database project. He taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, returning to Berkeley in 1983. Since that time, his research and teaching interests have focused on the design, engineering, and implementation of advanced high performance computing systems. Between 1985 and 1989, he led the design of the distributed cache and virtual memory organization of the SPUR multiprocessor project (HIS group invented the term "snooping caches"). Between 1987 and 1992, he led the design and implementation of the Berkeley RAID (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks) high performance storage system (who coined the term "RAID").

During 1993-1994, he was on leave at the Computing Systems Technology Office of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, where he served as program manager and deputy director. Randy Katz was responsible for establishing whitehouse.gov and the president and vice.president Internet mail accounts, he participated on Vice President Gore's National Performance Review, and played a lead role in formulating the Federal HPCC program's Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications research program in support of the Administration's National Information Infrastructure Initiative.


A photograph of Randy Katz (foreground) and President Clinton, Vice President Gore and others.

NEWSWEEK Magazine, 21 April 1997, listed Randy Katz among the 100 Americans for the Next Century. To quote Newsweek, "This is not a list of the great and powerful, or the beautiful and celebritous. Our object has been to take a snapshot of the future, framing some of the personalities whose creativity or talent or brains or leadership will make a difference in the years ahead."
Page 34, "This Berkeley prof got Clinton and Gore on the Web. In 2000 his name may pop up on Gore's transition list."

Randy Katz' reaction: "I suspect this comes as quite a shock to my acquaintances in Washington, especially the Vice President himself (if he reads Newsweek!)."

Hear Randy Katz talk on spectrum allocation issues he addressed in Washington

On this CD-ROM, Randy Katz contributed a series of slides on mobile computing. You can hear him speak on spectrum scarcity and wireless computing.

Research Interests

Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

His group is working, as part of the Infopad Project, to develop wireless networking strategies for microcellular systems that make it possible to support cellular hand-off while processing real-time data streams such as video. A major new direction is examine the issues of wireless/wireline network integration, internetwork operation, and end-to-end quality of service guarantees. This effort is called the Daedalus/Icarus Project. His group is testing these concepts in an in-building, metropolitan-area, and wide-area wireless testbed that they call BARWAN (Bay Area Research Wireless Access Network).

Distributed Mass Storage Systems

As part of the Sequoia 2000 Project, he is developing high performance, high capacity storage systems based on RAIDs and striped tape subsystems. Although Sequoia focuses on the management of scientific data, they have also been investigating the use of such systems for storage and playback of real-time video data streams. The next major thrust is on understanding how to build such capabilities in a wide area networking context, made possible by the Sequoia statewide T3 network testbed.

Slides on Mobile Computing

Recent Publications

K. Keeton, R. H. Katz, "The Evaluation of Video Layout Strategies in a High Bandwidth File Server," Multimedia Systems, V3, (1995), pp. 43-52.

E. Amir, H. Balakrishnan, S. Seshan, R. H. Katz, "Efficient TCP over Networks with Wireless Links," Proceedings HotOS-V Workshop, Orcus Island, WA, (May 1995).

M. Silva, R. H. Katz, "The Case for Design Using the World Wide Web," IEEE Design Automation Conference, San Francisco, CA, (June 1995).

A. L. Chervenak, D. A. Patterson, R. H. Katz, "Choosing the Best Storage System for Video Service," ACM Multimedia'95 Conference, San Francisco, CA, (October 1995).

H. Balakrishnan, S. Seshan, E. Amir, R. H. Katz, "Improving TCP/IP Performance over Wireless Networks," ACM Conference on Mobile Computing and Networks, Oakland, CA, (November 1995). Best Paper Award.

Selected Publications

Hill, M. D., S. J. Eggers, J. R. Larus, G. S. Taylor, G. Adams, B. K. Bose. G. A. Gibson, P. M. Hansen, J. Keller, S. I. Kong, C. G. Lee, D. Lee, J. M. Pendleton, S. A. Ritchie, D. A. Wood, B. G. Zorn, P. N. Hilfinger, D. A. Hodges, R. H. Katz, J. K. Ousterhout, D. A. Patterson, "Design Decisions in SPUR: A VLSI Multiprocessor Workstation," I.E.E.E. Computer Magazine, V 19, N 11, (November 1986).

D. A. Patterson, G. A. Gibson, R. H. Katz, "The Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)", Proceedings ACM SIGMOD Conference, Chicago, IL, (May 1988).

R. H. Katz, "Towards a Unified Framework for Version Modeling," ACM Computing Surveys, V 22, N 4, (December 1990), pp. 375 - 408.

R. H. Katz, "High Performance Network- and Channel-Attached Storage," Proceedings of the I.E.E.E., V. 80, N. 8, (August 1992).

R. Katz, Contemporary Logic Design, Addison-Wesley/Benjamin- Cummings Publishing Co., Redwood City, CA, 1993.



JPL's Wireless Communication Reference Website Updated June 1996.