SIGOPS

What SIGOPS does

SIGOPS is the ACM Special Interest Group in Operating Systems, a non-profit professional association operating under the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). It serves the global operating systems research community spanning academia, industry, and government, with no commercial product line. Its portfolio consists of flagship conferences (SOSP, OSDI, EuroSys), regional workshops (ChinaSys, APSys), and a portfolio of prestigious awards including the Mark Weiser Award (established 2001), the SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award (established 2005), the Dennis M. Ritchie Doctoral Dissertation Award (established 2013), and the Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing (jointly with EATCS). It also publishes a newsletter and blog covering research highlights, award announcements, and community news.

Technically, SIGOPS operates as a convening and editorial layer rather than a technology platform. Its infrastructure comprises the sigops.org website, the ACM membership portal for SIGOPS enrollment, a YouTube channel hosting conference recordings, and a Twitter/X presence for community updates. The organization is governed by elected volunteer officers (a Chair, Vice Chair, and Secretary/Treasurer as of the 2023 election) and operates without paid staff beyond a small administrative footprint. There is no proprietary software product, no API, no SDK, and no commercial pricing model.

SIGOPS's revenue model is implicit and non-commercial: it is funded through ACM's broader membership infrastructure, conference registration fees, and event-level sponsorships (e.g., Huawei, Ant Group, and Tsinghua University Press sponsoring the 25th ChinaSys Workshop in 2023). It does not disclose a standalone revenue figure, serves no paying enterprise customers, and is not a candidate for venture or private equity investment. Its value proposition is community stewardship, academic recognition, and curation of the field's most influential research venues.

Name

SIGOPS

Legal name

ACM Special Interest Group in Operating Systems

Website

https://sigops.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2001

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

ACM SIGOPS is a non-profit professional association that serves the global operating systems research community through flagship conferences (SOSP, OSDI, EuroSys), awards, and publications, operating under the Association for Computing Machinery.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

New York

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Operations, Personnel, Marketing or Sales

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

SIGOPS is a professional academic association under ACM that serves the operating systems research community by organizing premier conferences (SOSP, EuroSys, APSys, ChinaSys), administering prestigious research awards (Mark Weiser, Dennis M. Ritchie, Hall of Fame, Dijkstra, Distinguished Service, Rising Star), and publishing the SIGOPS Newsletter and Blog. Members and the broader community gain access to peer-reviewed venues, recognition via awards, and stay informed of developments in operating systems research.

Product overview

ACM SIGOPS (Special Interest Group in Operating Systems) is a professional organization that supports the operating systems research and development community. Rather than a unified software product, SIGOPS operates as a portfolio of programs and services including major conferences (SOSP, EuroSys, APSys, ChinaSys), prestigious awards (Mark Weiser Award, Dennis M. Ritchie Award, Hall of Fame Award, Dijkstra Prize), publications including newsletters and blog content, and research highlights. The organization facilitates knowledge sharing and recognition of excellence in operating systems research across industry, academia, and government.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• SOSP: Biennial ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles - the world's premier forum for researchers, developers, and teachers of computer systems technology
• OSDI
• APSys
• ChinaSys
• EuroSys

Products and services

• SOSP (ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles) SOSP is the flagship conference of SIGOPS, a premier peer-reviewed venue for original research in operating system design and principles. It is held biennially and serves academic researchers and industry practitioners in operating systems.
• OSDI (USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation) OSDI is a top-tier peer-reviewed venue for operating systems research, co-sponsored by USENIX in cooperation with SIGOPS; held in odd years alternating with SOSP.
• EuroSys EuroSys is the European regional conference on operating systems sponsored by SIGOPS, serving European OS researchers and practitioners with peer-reviewed publications.
• APSys (Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems) APSys is the Asia-Pacific workshop on systems, sponsored by SIGOPS, serving researchers and practitioners in the Asia-Pacific region with peer-reviewed publications.
• ChinaSys ChinaSys is the SIGOPS in-cooperation conference for operating systems research in China, serving as a regional venue for Chinese OS researchers and practitioners.
• Mark Weiser Award The Mark Weiser Award is a SIGOPS award announced annually to recognize an individual researcher for broad impact in operating systems research throughout their career. Recent recipients include Eddie Kohler (2023), Frank Dabek (2022), and Frank McSherry (2021).
• Dennis M. Ritchie Doctoral Dissertation Award The Dennis M. Ritchie Doctoral Dissertation Award is a SIGOPS award recognizing outstanding doctoral thesis research in computer systems, presented in cooperation with USENIX. Recent recipients have been recognized for dissertations in operating systems research.
• Hall of Fame Award (OSDI) The Hall of Fame Award (OSDI) is co-sponsored by SIGOPS and USENIX, recognizing the most influential papers from prior OSDI conferences whose impact has been demonstrated over time.
• Dijkstra Prize The Dijkstra Prize is awarded by SIGOPS in cooperation with other ACM SIGs to recognize the most influential papers in distributed computing.
• SIGOPS Newsletter The SIGOPS Newsletter is a periodic publication of the ACM Special Interest Group in Operating Systems, distributed to SIGOPS members and the broader OS research community.
• SIGOPS Blog The SIGOPS Blog is an online publication providing news, commentary, and updates relevant to the operating systems research community.

Quantifiable outcome

• Multiple flagship conferences (SOSP, OSDI, EuroSys, HotOS, ChinaSys) serving the systems research community
• +1 more outcomes

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Partnerships

Seven partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.

• Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.minorOthers · 16 December 2023Sponsorship support for the 25th ChinaSys Workshop on Computer Systems held December 16-17, 2023 in Lanzhou, Gansu.
• Huawei Cloud Computing Technologies Co., Ltd.minorOthers · 16 December 2023Sponsorship support for the 25th ChinaSys Workshop on Computer Systems held December 16-17, 2023 in Lanzhou, Gansu.
• Ant GroupminorOthers · 16 December 2023Sponsorship support for the 25th ChinaSys Workshop on Computer Systems held December 16-17, 2023 in Lanzhou, Gansu.
• Lanzhou UniversitycoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 16 December 2023Host institution for the 25th ChinaSys Workshop, organized by ACM China SIGOPS (ChinaSys) with support from Tsinghua University Press.
• Peking UniversitycoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 16 December 2023Co-host and program committee leadership for the 25th ChinaSys Workshop. Qun Huang served as Program Committee Chair.
• Tsinghua University PressminorOthers · 16 December 2023Provided support for the 25th ChinaSys Workshop on Computer Systems.
• USENIXcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2023Collaborative relationship between ACM SIGOPS and USENIX for conference scheduling and review load management, including coordinated submission and review policies for SOSP and OSDI.

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Broad incumbents

• IEEE Computer Society: IEEE Computer Society is a parallel broad-incumbent computing professional association that publishes journals, runs conferences, and confers awards across computer science subfields. It overlaps with SIGOPS in serving computer systems researchers, though it does not run a flagship OS-only venue.
• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM): ACM is SIGOPS's parent organization and the broader professional computing society housing multiple SIGs (SIGCOMM, SIGARCH, SIGPLAN, etc.). It is the incumbent umbrella body that provides administrative, membership, and publication infrastructure to SIGOPS and its sister special interest groups.

Direct peers

• ACM SIGCOMM: SIGCOMM is a sister ACM Special Interest Group focused on computer networking. It runs flagship conferences (SIGCOMM, CoNEXT, IMC) that share the same membership-base, conference-organization model, and academic-community-building playbook as SIGOPS, serving researchers with adjacent technical interests.
• ACM SIGARCH: SIGARCH is a sister ACM SIG focused on computer architecture research. It co-runs conferences like ISCA, MICRO, and ASPLOS — venues whose research communities heavily overlap with SIGOPS's systems research audience and whose organization model (ACM SIG governance, volunteer-driven) is structurally identical.
• USENIX: USENIX is the most directly comparable peer — a U.S.-based computing professional association that co-organizes OSDI with ACM SIGOPS and shares a strategic alliance for joint submission/review policies. Both organizations run premier systems research conferences and serve overlapping academic and industry audiences.
• ACM SIGPLAN: SIGPLAN is the ACM SIG for programming languages, running POPL, PLDI, OOPSLA, and related venues. It is structurally and operationally a near-twin of SIGOPS, serving an adjacent research community with the same membership-conference-awards governance model.

Emerging players

• Computing Research Association (CRA): CRA is a broader coalition of computing research organizations (academic departments, labs, and societies) that supports the computing research community through policy advocacy, workforce studies, and the CRA-Women program. It complements SIGOPS by serving the research community at a meta-level rather than running conferences in a specific subfield.
• AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence): AAAI is a sibling professional scientific society that runs AI-focused conferences and awards. It is an adjacent peer as AI increasingly converges with systems research — the topic focus of SIGOPS's recent publications — making AAAI a thematically related venue drawing overlapping research talent.

Others

• USENIX Security Symposium: USENIX Security is a USENIX-run flagship venue on security research — a sub-area SIGOPS explicitly lists in its mission. It is an adjacent community-organizing effort under the broader USENIX umbrella that overlaps with SIGOPS in conference format, audience, and publication model.

Regional players

• EATCS (European Association for Theoretical Computer Science): EATCS is the European theoretical computer science association that jointly awards the Dijkstra Prize with ACM SIGOPS. It is a regional peer operating the same professional-association model in Europe, focused on TCS but with overlapping distributed-computing community ties to SIGOPS.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks1 record

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xtwitter.com/acmsigops
• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UC6jgDZsRWpE9uJKe202F0iw
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/acm-sigops

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles5 records

Subsidiaries3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about SIGOPS