[blacksmithgu]

I think "systems engineering" has won out over "systems research" - optimizing existing systems instead of creating new ones. Part of it is that we are constrained by our hardware, which forces us into specific paradigms; but I think also systems end up becoming fungible and it a point it doesn't really matter what RPC protocol you use - just that it's fast.

[pyrolistical]

While true we are hardware bound, it’s pretty apparently we are not fully utilizing the hardware all the time. That gap is what research needs to close

[blacksmithgu]

I would say closing that gap is exactly what engineering is - optimizing your existing systems to maximally use the hardware. Its very quantitative and extremely detail oriented; you usually just improve Linux or add system calls for better performance, instead of baking up a whole new operating system.

Obviously part of this is just arguing over semantics though :)