As the field of warehouse-scale computing matures we continue to find new and interesting problems to solve. Some of the most interesting problems are the ones that are trivial to explain once identified, and yet remain very hard to solve. I'll present three examples of such problems drawn from our experience building and operating large computing systems at Google.

Dr. Barroso is a Google Fellow and his technical interests range from distributed systems software to the design of Google's computing platform. While at Google he has co-authored some well-cited articles on warehouse-scale computing, energy proportionality and storage system reliability. He also co-wrote The Datacenter as a Computer, the first textbook to describe the architecture of warehouse-scale computing systems. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica of Rio de Janeiro, and a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California. Dr. Barroso is an ACM Fellow and AAAS Fellow, serves on the National Academies' Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, and was a coauthor of a National Academies Report The Future of Computing Performance: Game Over or Next Level?