The 16th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems will bring together researchers and practitioners in computer systems, broadly construed. Continuing the HotOS tradition, participants will present and discuss new ideas in systems research and how technological advances and new applications are shaping our computational infrastructure.

Computing systems encompass both traditional platforms—smartphones, desktops, and datacenters—and new technologies, like implantable embedded devices, geographically distributed stream processing systems, and autonomous vehicle control. In this context, a deluge of personal, corporate, sensitive, ephemeral, or historical information being produced, transmitted, processed, and stored poses interesting systems challenges. Systems are expected to guard this information, and do so better, faster, and using less energy.

We solicit position papers that propose new directions of systems research, advocate innovative approaches to long-standing systems problems, or report on deep insights gained from experience with real-world systems. HotOS areas of interest include operating systems, storage, networking, distributed systems, programming languages, security, dependability, and manageability. We are also interested in systems contributions influenced by other fields such as hardware design, machine learning, control theory, networking, economics, social organization, and biological or other nontraditional computing systems.

To ensure a vigorous workshop, attendance is by invitation only. Authors will be invited based on their submission’s originality, topical relevance, technical merit, and likelihood of leading to insightful technical discussions that will influence future systems research. We will heavily favor submissions that are radical, forward-looking, and open-ended, as opposed to mature work on the verge of conference publication.