Transparent Computing

Transparent Computing:
A New Paradigm for Pervasive Computing
Prof. Yaoxue Zhang
Tsinghua University

Contents
1. Introduction
2. What is the Idea?
3. What is the Difference?
4. An Implementation Example
5. Demonstration and Application
6. Conclusions

1. Introduction
1.1 Change of Computing Paradigms
Mainframe
Computing
Desktop-based
Network
Computing
Pervasive Computing
( Ubiquitous Computing
T/M
C/S C/N C/VE
Everything is a Computer
Technologies disappear
~1970’s ~2000’s 21st Century

1.2 The Characteristics of Pervasive Computing
Remote communication
Fault tolerance
High Availability
Remote information access
Distributed security
Distributed
Systems
Mobile
Computing
Pervasive
Computing
Mobile networking
Mobile information access
Adaptive applications
Energy-aware systems
Location sensitivity
(From M. Satyanarayanan, 2001)
Personalized Service
(Active Service)

1.3 Some Problems to Realize Pervasive Computing in
Traditional Computer Systems
Any computer consists of a hardware platform and
a software platform
Users can not choose services from heterogeneous
software platform underlying on the same hardware
platform
It is not easy and effective to :
•Use Smart Spaces
•Provide personalized services
•Provide powerful computing ability even in light-weight computers
•Localize scalability in heterogeneous OSes

1.4 Transparent computing
Realize "stored program " (Von Neumann
Architecture ) in network environment
Users can select services from heterogeneous OSes
environments
Personalized Services,
e.g. Windows and Linux
Execution and Storage of Program are separated
in different computers
Execution: light-weight devices or clients
(as assembling factory)
Storage:
Servers (as Warehouse)
JITC (Just In Time Computing)

2. What is the Idea?
A new Meta OS which can control OSes to
realize:
user selection of services
streaming program
separation of execution and storage
of Program

2.1 General Model
Users choose OS & Application Using light-weight devices without OS.
Meta OS schedules services to Clients to execute.

2.2 Proposed Topology of Trans-Computing
Paradigm
TC
( Transparent
Clients )
TDN
( Transparent
Delivery Network )
Light-weight devices:
PC, PDA, Intelligent
Mobile Phone, Digital
Appliance, Dedicated
clients, et al.
Ethernet, CATV, 802.11,
IEEE 1394, et al.
(Ubiquitous Communication)
TS
( Transparent
Servers )
Regular PC, PC
Server, et al.

2.3 The Architecture of Trans-Computing
Application Layer
Application Layer
Application Layer
Heterogeneous OS Layer
Meta OS Layer
(VDMS, NSAP, MRBP, etc)
Heterogeneous OS Layer
Heterogeneous JITC Layer OS Layer
(Non-Resident)
Other Part of Trans-
Computing Other Part Support of Trans- Layer
Computing (VDMS, Meta NSAP, Support OS etc) Layer
(VDMS, NSAP, etc)
MRBP
MRBP MRBP
TDN Layer
Network Delivery Layer
Network Delivery Layer
TDN Layer
TS
TC
Resident Module
Non-Resident Module

2.4 The Modules of Meta OS
+
4VP System
VUM (Virtual User Management )
VFM (Virtual File Management )
VDM (Virtual Disk Management )
VIOM (Virtual I/O Management )
4VP
(Non-Resident)
MRBP(Multi-OS Remote Booting Protocol)/
NSAP(Network Service Access Protocol)
Server Main Board
MRBP
Client Main Board
TS
Network
TC

Overall architecture of Trans-Com with a server
and a single client
NSAP
File
redirector
Vdisk
Driver
VIOM
Manage
ment
VFile
System
Virtual Disk
TS
TC

MRBP: Start Delivery and Booting of OSes
TS
TC
Start
Waiting
NO
If Received the signal
from a client
Search the Boot blocks
Send the Boot block
numbers to Client
Get Start Interruption
Signal
Send Message to Servers to
Search Oses Boot blocks
If get the numbers of
blocks, then show to user
Wait for user Choose for
Default Start
Start NSAP
Search and delivery
Meta OS
NO
Default
If User Choose a OS
Start NSAP to get Meta
OS
Page Scheduling of
instance OS
instance OS Running

3. What is the difference?
Comparing with traditional paradigm
Realize stored program in network environment.
User chooses OS.
Clients are bare, light-weight machines, but it can
run heterogeneous OSes and applications
efficiently.
Multi-Users share single version software
installed in servers.
All Programs are centralized in Servers, easy to
management.

4. An Implementation Example
4.1 Implementation Using C/S model
Inetrnet
TS
NAT
NAT:Network
Address
Translation
TC
…
TC
…
TC
Topo of TransCom System

TC:
• Low Power:

Testbed
4.2 Performance Analysis
Hardware Configuration
TC (30 sets)
Intel Celeron 1 GHz with 128 MB RAM
Onboard network card: 100 Mbps
TS (3 sets)
AMD Athlon64 3000+ with 2 GB RAM
Hard Disk: Seagate SATA 7200 RPM, 2*80 G (RAID 0)
Onboard network card: 1 Gbps
TDN
Huawei-3Com Ethernet switch with
48 100 Mbps interfaces (for client)
and 2 1 Gbps interfaces (for server)
Software Configuration
TS
TC
Windows 98, Windows 2000, Linux
and other application software
No OS and applications

Booting performance
100
90
80
70
BIOS
PXE
UOSL
OS Loading
Boot time (s)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
PC 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 14 16
TransCom client number
X-axis: Number of TC
Y-axis: Boot Time

NSAP Throughput
X-axis: Request Size
Y-axis: Throughput
Throughput (MB/s)
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
VD (128M)
VD (256M)
VD (512M)
VD (1G)
VD (2G)
VD (2G No cache)
LD (128M)
Throughput (MB/s)
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
VD (128M)
VD (256M)
VD (512M)
VD (1G)
VD (2G)
VD (2G No cache)
LD (128M)
2
2
0 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128
Evaluated with SQLIO from Microsoft
Request Size (KB)
Read, unbuffered
0 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128
Request Size (KB)
Write, unbuffered
Random access: performance better than local disks with small
request size
Random access: performance better than local disks with small
request size

Function Evaluation (Start times)
Applications/OS 1 PC 1 TC 10 TCs 28 TCs
Booting OS
Windows2000
Server
Office Applications
53"13 48"73 70"62
142"57
Word 2003 2"23 1"26 2"28 11"50
Image processing applications
PhotoShop V7.0
13"29
11"08
16"48
1'0"51
Flash V6.0
18"62
7"16
31"41
1'16"56
3D MAX V8.0
29"71
25"68
34"24
1'16"56
Copying files
28"24
24"33
49"48
4'6"99
Playing multimedia
Windows Media
Player
smoothly
smoothly
smoothly
smoothly

5. Demonstration and Application
Demo
Remote Startup different OSes and applications on the same TC
Demo Script:
1. Startup Windows 98 System;
2. Startup Win2000 System, and run
some applications such as Word,
IPTV, and etc;
3. Startup Linux (Redhat) System,
and run some applications.
Demo Video
(Click for play)

Applications

6. Conclusions
We Proposed a new computing paradigm:
Trans-Computing
Some Issues need to be researched to support
pervasive computing:
‣ How to support more OSes?
‣ How to support more devices?
‣ How to support more extensive applications?

Thanks!

A Computer system without OS can
only do nothing
Applications
Applications
Applications
OS & Tools
Windows
or
UNIX
Main board
X86
SPARC

Users can not choose services freely in
traditional computing paradigm
• Desktop OS (Such as Windows) is too big to run
in light-weight computer systems.
• Embedded OS (such as Palm) is not so powerful
to support the enough applications users require.
• User can not choose applications based on
different OSes via the same machine. (like choose
TV Program)

Stored Program
Consider data and instruction as the same
Stored Program has realized in the single computer
system by now, stored data has realized in
network.
have not realized storage of instructions in network
environment.
Transparent Computing:
Realize stored program in network environment
Streaming of program

Users can choose services freely in transparent
computing paradigm
Instruction
Compatible
TC
...
Different OSes

C: computing
M: management
S: storage
Server
Central Storage &
Management
Client
Distributed Execution