Symposium on Operating Systems Principles


The Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, organized by the Association for Computing Machinery, is one of the most prestigious single-track academic conferences on operating systems.
Before 2023, SOSP was held every other year, alternating with the conference on Operating Systems Design and Implementation ; starting 2024, SOSP began to be held every year. The first SOSP was held in 1967. It is sponsored by the ACM's Special Interest Group on Operating Systems.

History

The inaugural conference was held in Gatlinburg, Tennessee on 1–4 October 1967 at the Mountain View Hotel. There were fifteen papers in total, of which three presentations were in the Computer Networks and Communications session. Larry Roberts presented his plan for the ARPANET, a computer network for resource sharing, which at that point was based on Wesley Clark's proposal for a message switching network. Jack Dennis from MIT discussed the merits of a more general data communications network. Roger Scantlebury, a member of Donald Davies' team from the UK National Physical Laboratory, presented their research on packet switching in a high-speed computer network, and referenced the work of Paul Baran. At this seminal meeting, Scantlebury proposed packet switching for use in the ARPANET and persuaded Roberts and Bob Taylor the economics were favorable to message switching. The ARPA team enthusiastically received the idea and Roberts incorporated it into the ARPANET design.
In total, 31 conferences have been held, seven of which were outside the USA. The first conference held outside the USA was in Saint-Malo, France in 1997. Other countries to have hosted the conference are Canada, the UK, Portugal, China, Germany and South Korea.

List of conferences

From 1967 to 2023, the conferences were held every two years, with the first SOSP conference taking place in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Beginning in 2024, SOSP the conference is held every year.
NoYearDatesLocation
11967Oct 1-4Gatlinburg, TN USA
21969Oct 20-22Princeton, NJ USA
31971Oct 18-20Palo Alto, CA USA
41973Oct 15-17Yorktown Heights, NY USA
51975Nov 19-21Austin, TX USA
61977Nov 16-18West Lafayette, IN USA
71979Dec 10-12Pacific Grove, CA USA
81981Dec 14-16Pacific Grove, CA USA
91983Oct 10-13Bretton Woods, NH USA
101985Dec 1-4Orcas Island, WA USA
111987Nov 8-11Austin, TX USA
121989Dec 3-6Litchfield Park, AZ USA
131991Oct 13-16Pacific Grove, CA USA
141993Dec 5-8Asheville, NC USA
151995Dec 3-6Copper Mountain Resort, CO USA
161997Oct 5-8Saint-Malo, France
171999Dec 12-15Kiawah Island Resort, SC USA
182001Oct 21-24Chateau Lake Louise, Banff, Canada
192003Oct 19-22Bolton Landing, NY USA
202005Oct 23-26Brighton, UK
212007Oct 14-17Stevenson, WA USA
222009Oct 11-14Big Sky, MT USA
232011Oct 23-26Cascais, Portugal
242013Nov 3-6Farmington, PA USA
252015Oct 4-7Monterey, CA USA
262017Oct 28-31Shanghai, China
272019Oct 27-30Huntsville, Ontario, Canada
282021Oct 25-28Virtual Event
292023Oct 23-26Koblenz, Germany
302024Nov 4-6Austin, TX USA
312025Oct 13-16Seoul, South Korea