I sat down with Darko Mesaros to talk about Kiro, specification-driven developme
I sat down with Darko Mesaros to talk about Kiro, specification-driven development, and putting AI-powered development in context of the history of computing. Is an LLM a compiler? What is a spec? How are specs like SQL? Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdD9eLiRRVo and be sure to check out https://kiro.dev/
New blog post, about some of my favorite papers from this year's HotOS program.
New blog post, about some of my favorite papers from this year's HotOS program. Love Little's law? Hate fork? Think static analysis of shell programs sounds fun? Had enough of the f threshold model? Check it out for some papers to read: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2025/06/02/hotos.html
As far as I know, this issue has existed in PostgreSQL since the introduction of
As far as I know, this issue has existed in PostgreSQL since the introduction of MVCC more than two decades ago. It affects most clustered installations of PostgreSQL. We are working with the PostgreSQL community on a fix. This issue doesn't affect Amazon Aurora Limitless Database, or Aurora DSQL. Both of these databases use different methods for ordering transactions, which provide a consistent o
Recently, one of our testing tools at AWS found an issue with transaction visibi
Recently, one of our testing tools at AWS found an issue with transaction visibility in PostgreSQL, where the order that transactions become visible differs between the primary and replicas. Sergey Melnik dives deep on the AWS Database Blog: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/understanding-transaction-visibility-in-postgresql-clusters-with-read-replicas/
The fourth and last in my series of blog posts on our new Aurora DSQL database i
The fourth and last in my series of blog posts on our new Aurora DSQL database is up! This time, we're looking at what happens during network partitions, and how we preserve consistency, availability, and durability. Check it out: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2024/12/06/inside-dsql-cap.html
Today's third blog post on Aurora DSQL: this time looking at the write and commi
Today's third blog post on Aurora DSQL: this time looking at the write and commit path, and how conflicts are detected and handled: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2024/12/05/inside-dsql-writes.html
Rust Foundation Collaborates With AWS Initiative to Verify Rust Standard Librari
Rust Foundation Collaborates With AWS Initiative to Verify Rust Standard Libraries https://foundation.rust-lang.org/news/rust-foundation-collaborates-with-aws-initiative-to-verify-rust-standard-libraries/ Verify the Safety of the Rust Standard Library https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/verify-the-safety-of-the-rust-standard-library/
I'm on the AWS Developers podcast this morning, talking to Julian Wood about AWS
I'm on the AWS Developers podcast this morning, talking to Julian Wood about AWS Lambda's 10th anniversary, the growth of serverless, and some of what we learned along the way. https://developers.podcast.go-aws.com/web/podcasts/episode_137/index.html
"But what about time-to-market?" has been one of the objections to automated rea
"But what about time-to-market?" has been one of the objections to automated reasoning and formal methods forever, but in many domains they allow us to get to market faster. This is especially true in security, availability, and durability-critical domains.
Great new piece from Byron Cook about automated reasoning at AWS, and how we're
Great new piece from Byron Cook about automated reasoning at AWS, and how we're finding it not only allows us to deliver safer code, but also deliver faster code, and deliver code faster. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/an-unexpected-discovery-automated-reasoning-often-makes-systems-more-efficient-and-easier-to-maintain/
More great work from Kyle, and another reminder that retrying isn't the safe bes
More great work from Kyle, and another reminder that retrying isn't the safe best-practice that many folks assume it is: https://jepsen.io/analyses/jetcd-0.8.2
I've been learning Lean recently to add to my formal toolkit, and it's been a re
I've been learning Lean recently to add to my formal toolkit, and it's been a really eye-opening experience. I don't have much of a math background, but have already found Lean lets me do things that I found really hard before.
Loved this talk by Terence Tao on math, AI, and proof assistants. I suspect we'r
Loved this talk by Terence Tao on math, AI, and proof assistants. I suspect we're going to see a similar effect in software: AI will allow formal specs to be developed faster than traditional programs, and for programs to be generated from those specs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sTDSO74D8Q
So much fun systems work here. I'm super proud of the team that shipped this pro
So much fun systems work here. I'm super proud of the team that shipped this product, and wrote this paper describing (a small part of) their innovation. Check out our paper here: https://www.amazon.science/publications/resource-management-in-aurora-serverless
Next, we had to learn how to actively manage heat across the database fleet, in
Next, we had to learn how to actively manage heat across the database fleet, in a way that ensured the right resources are available when customers need them. This work included placement, live migration, and instance-level controls.
Next, we had to place databases across a large fleet in a way that allowed us to
Next, we had to place databases across a large fleet in a way that allowed us to optimize for performance, predictability, and cost. Placement allows us to pick workloads that fit nicely together, such as by wanting to scale at different times.
Teaching database engines how to scale up isn't too hard: they're hungry hippos
Teaching database engines how to scale up isn't too hard: they're hungry hippos and will eat all the memory and CPU you can give them. Teaching them to scale down was harder, and required us to really understand what drives working-set behavior at the engine and OS level.
No appearances yet. If you've seen Marc Brooker as a guest somewhere, hit + suggest to add it.
