Neil Davies

Since 2003, when Neil co-founded Predictable Network Solutions, he has been working on solving problems involving assuring quality of experience in various large scale systems.


He's worked on Future Combat Systems and delivering effective Video Telephony for sign language speakers over commodity networking, as well as helping various network operators (mobile and fixed) improve their systems. He continues to be involved in the optimisation of the data acquisition network of the ATLAS project, part of the LHC at CERN.


These activities have covered the complete range of constraints on the emergent properties of complex distributed systems: cost, safety critically, fitness for purpose, maximisation of return on fixed infrastructure, and maximisation of outcomes within fixed budget, as well as failing gracefully as infrastructure gets overloaded.


Neil's activities are all firmly embedded in mathematics. Over the years he has developed new approaches to capturing behaviour and performance (Stochastic Process Algebras) as well as ways of constructing production grade software solutions from domain specific languages. He takes an intuitionistic (or constructivist) approach to his craft, in that the systems and solutions that he constructs are 'witnesses' to the proof of statements in the mathematical formulations.


This has permitted him not just to think and reason about problems, but to construct their demonstration and prototype solutions where scalability, cost and design decisions are all visible.