Analytical Performance Modeling for Computer Systems: Third Edition (Synthesis Lectures on Computer Science, 10)

Engineering mechanics is one of the fundamental branches of science that is important in the education of professional engineers of any major. Most of the basic engineering courses, such as mechanics of materials, fluid and gas mechanics, machine design, mechatronics, acoustics, vibrations, etc. are based on engineering mechanics courses. In order to absorb the materials of engineering mechanics, it is not enough to consume just theoretical laws and theorems—a student also must develop an ability to solve practical problems. Therefore, it is necessary to solve many problems independently. This book is a part of a four-book series designed to supplement the engineering mechanics courses. This series instructs and applies the principles required to solve practical engineering problems in the following branches of mechanics: statics, kinematics, dynamics, and advanced kinetics. Each book contains between 6 and 8 topics on its specific branch and each topic features 30 problems to be assigned as homework, tests, and/or midterm/final exams with the consent of the instructor. A solution of one similar sample problem from each topic is provided.

This first book contains seven topics of statics, the branch of mechanics concerned with the analysis of forces acting on construction systems without an acceleration (a state of the static equilibrium). The book targets the undergraduate students of the sophomore/junior level majoring in science and engineering.

Y.C. Tay received his B.Sc. from the University of Singapore and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore, and a Resident Fellow in Tembusu College. He has spent sabbaticals at Princeton, MIT, Cambridge, UCLA, National Taiwan University, Microsoft, Intel, and VMware. He has served on program committees for ACM SIGMETRICS, ACM SIGMOD, IFIP PERFORMANCE, VLDB, IEEE ICDE, IEEE MASCOTS, IFIP NETWORKING, and ICS. He is also a Senior Associate Editor for ACM Transactions Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems. His main research interest is performance modeling (database transactions, wireless protocols, Internet traffic, cache misses). Other interests include database systems (synthetic generation of data and social networks) and the use of local time in distributed computing. He has won several teaching awards.