Connecting the Invisible Extremes of Computing

David Culler

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~culler

U.C. Berkeley

Summer Inst. on Invisible Computing

July, 1999.

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What I do

• Parallel Computer Architecture

• Lean Operating Systems

• Novel Programming Environments

=> Lean, Fast & Flexible Communication Primitives– Active Messages

=> Design of Federated Systems of Systems– NOW (Network of Workstation)

• Current Projects– Millennium: Campus-wide Cluster-of-Clusters Testbed

– Ninja: Proactive Infrastructure Services

– Endeavour: Information Utility based on Fluid Software

– UCB (universal computing @ berkeley)

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Expanding the Spectrum

• Desktops– max out at few 100M– in your face– connected to the infrastructure

• Ubiquitous Devices– billions– sensors / actuators– PDAs / smartphones / PCs– heterogeneous

Service Path

• Scalable Infrastructure– highly available– persistent state (safe)– databases, agents– service programming environment

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Issues Converge at the Extremes

• Powerful Services on “Small” Devices– massive computing and storage in the infrastructure

– active adaptation of form and content “on the way”

• Lean, Flexible Communication Building-Blocks– simplicity is the key to efficiency

• Federated System of Systems

• Availability, Automatic Configuration and Management

• Plug it all together and have it DWYM!

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Ninja Vision

• You walk into a room

You have complete, secure, optimized access to local devices and your private resources

• Your PDA connects to the local infrastructure and asks it to build a custom GUI

• Next, your PDA asks the infrastructure for a path out to your personal information space, where agents are processing your e-mail, v-mail, faxes, and pages

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Push Services into an Active Infrastructure

Servers

Clients

ClientsClients

ClientsClients

Clients

Servers

Servers

Infrastructure Services

Open

=> enable Distributed Innovation of Scalable, Avail. Services

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Millennium: Large-Scale Testbed

• Campus-wide cluster-of-clusters extended down

• Management by Services– push monitoring service into nodes

• Resource allocation by market services– banks, brokers, merchants

Cell Phones

PDAs Future Devices

Wireless DesktopPCs

Servers

Clusters

Massive Cluster

Gigabit Ethernet

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Endeavour Vision/Objective

• Enhancing human understanding through information technology

– Make it dramatically more convenient for people to interact with information, devices, and other people

– Supported by a “planetary-scale” Information Utility

» Stress tested by challenging applications in decision making and learning

» New methodologies for design, construction, and administration of systems of unprecedented scale and complexity

– Figure of merit: how effectively we amplify and leverage human intellect

• A pervasive Information Utility, based on “fluid systems technology” to enable new approaches for problem solving & learning

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Proposed Approach• Information Devices

– Beyond desktop computers to MEMS-sensors/actuators with capture/display to yield

enhanced activity spaces

• InformationUtility

• InformationApplications

– High Speed/Collaborative Decision Making and Learning

– Augmented “Smart” Spaces: Rooms and Vehicles

• Design Methodology– User-centric Design with

HW/SW Co-design;

– Formal methods for safe and trustworthy decomposable and reusable components

“Fluid”, Network-Centric System Software

– Partitioning and management of state between soft and persistent state

– Data processing placement and movement

– Component discovery and negotiation

– Flexible capture, self-organization, and re-use of information

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What I’m looking for in an Architecture for Billions of Devices

• Reservoirs, Flows, Self-Checking

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Natural Tides of Innovation

Time

Integration

Innovation

Log R

Mainframe

Minicomputer

Personal ComputerWorkstationServer

2/99

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universal

Function: adjective

1 : including or covering all or a whole collectively or distributively without limit or exception

2 a : present or occurring everywhere b : existent or operative everywhere or under all conditions <universal cultural patterns>

3 a : embracing a major part or the greatest portion (as of mankind) <a universal state> <universal practices> b : comprehensively broad and versatile <a universal genius>

4 a : affirming or denying something of all members of a class or of all values of a variable b : denoting every member of a class <a universal term>

5 : adapted or adjustable to meet varied requirements (as of use, shape, or size)