SF Systems Club: Deterministic Computing On Real Hardware
The SF Systems Club is back for its final event of 2025! Antithesis is hosting this time, and they’ll be talking about building a deterministic virtual machine. Light food and drinks will be provided.
Worry not if you’ve forgotten some details from your college systems classes! This talk will introduce the details of virtualization and the non-determinism of real hardware, and it will gradually build up to the cool tricks needed to build determinism. (Yes, you can make scheduling and the TLB deterministic!)
In their own words:
How do you do Deterministic Simulation Testing on arbitrary complex programs? You build a deterministic virtual machine. Alex from Antithesis discusses the theory, tradeoffs, and design challenges of their foundational technology.
Agenda:
5:30pm: doors open.
6:30pm: talk starts.
7:00pm: Intermission. Q&A and break.
7:15pm: Talk resumes.
7:45pm: Talk finishes, Q&A, mingling.