EECS Systems Research in the Post- PC Era David Culler U.C. Berkeley EECS (ILP) Conference Feb 18, 1999

EECS Systems Research in the Post-PC Era

David Culler

U.C. Berkeley

EECS (ILP) Conference

Feb 18, 1999

http://postPC.cs.berkeley.edu

http://postpc.cs.berkeley.edu/








2/18/99 EECS PostPC 2

Format of the Session

• Morning Highlight Talk - Dave Patterson– Computer Architecture and the Infrastructure

• Systems Research Agenda - David Culler

• Ninja Service Platform Architecture - Steven Gribble

– Push scalable services into the infrastructure

• Security in a Pervasive Computing Environment - Mike Chen

– distributed due to limits on power and trust

• Comfortable pace & Lots of Discussion


The Emerging Platform Pyramid

SuperComputers

SuperServers

Departmental Servers

Workstations

Personal Computers100 Millions

Millions

Thousands

Workstations

Small DevicesBillions


Exciting new components

* * *


Natural Tides of Innovation

Time

Integration

Innovation

Log R

Mainframe

Minicomputer

Personal ComputerWorkstationServer

2/99


Historical Perspective

• New eras of computing start when the previous era is so strong it is hard to imagine that things could ever be different

– mainframe -> mini

– mini -> workstation -> PC

– PC -> ???

• It is always smaller than what came before.

• Most think of the new technology as “just a toy”

• The new dominant use was almost completely absent before.

• So where are we headed in the post-PC era?


Away from the “average device”

• Powerful, personal capabilities from specialized devices– small, highly mobile or embedded in the environment

• Intelligence + immense storage and processing in the infrastructure

• Everything connected

Laptops, Desktops

Devices


Complement to industry efforts

• Get maximum number of applications first– 1990 PC capality in handheld device

– microkernel port of Unix or Windows

– emulate vast API

• Mobile extension of dedicated PC– take short excursion and synch

• Success of the Palm Pilot with primitive OS and split application model is significant

– it’s the approach, not the technical superiority


Example - PDA scope

• http://www.21store.co.uk/pdantic/pdachart.htm

http://www.21store.co.uk/pdantic/pdachart.htm









Rich set of new challenges

• Natural, high-content user interfaces

• Sensors, actuators, display, speech

• devices, small OS, low power

• massive distributed system

• “Middleware”

• Security, privacy, content

• Networking

• Software engineering

• Administration and management

• Extraction of knowledge from activities


Future Internet-Scale Systems

• ~10 Billion of Information Appliances

• ~100 Million of Stationary Computers

• ~Million Scalable Servers


Natural Convergence at the Extremes

• “Internet-Scale” => system reaches “everywhere”– small devices will be what is “wherever”

– powerful servers is where is all goes

• Scalability, efficiency, simplicity, availability, adaptation

– commonality in design goals and technology

– federated systems

• The breakthrough ahead is pervasive devices + communication


Seeds sewn in many projects

• Devices - Infopad, IRAM

• Scalable Servers - NOW, Millennium

• Storage - Tertiary Disk, Istore, Aetherstore

• Sensors and Actuators - BSAC

• Connectivity - BWRC

• Transcoding Services - Wingman, Mediaboard

• Platform Architecture - Ninja

• Computing/Telephony Integration - Iceberg

• Programming Enviornments and Tools

• User interfaces - Notepals


A Radical Experiment

• What we need is not just a new research project, but a new “computing culture”

=> Build a department-wide, universal wireless PDA infrastructure and a community to take it forward

• Initial Seed Fall 98 with IBM– 150+ IBM workpads + lots of cradles + IR + ???

• Initial community– Ninja, ICEBERG, MASH grad students

– Senior UI Class (CS 160)

– All interested 1st year CS grads (CS 252, 261, 262 projects)

– Fill out based on interest, talent and availability

=> “ask a good question and get yours” seminar


Fall’98 Project Excerpts

• E-Commerce and Security– Pay-Per-Use Services on the Palm Computing Platform (Mike Chen, Andrew Geweke)

– Secure Email Infrastructure for PDAs (Hoon Kang, Rob von Behren)

– SyncAnywhere - Secure Network HotSync (Mike Chen, Helen Wang)

• Groupware– Kiretsu - Ninja Instant Messaging Service (Matt Welsh, Steve Gribble)

– The MASH MediaPad - Shared Electronic Whiteboard for the PalmPilot (Yatin Chawathe)

– NotePals - Lightweight Meeting Support Using PDAs (Richard Davis)

– OSKI - Open Shared Kalendaring Infrastructure (Jason Hong, Brad Morrey, Mark Newman)

• OS and Communications– PalmRouter - Networking Sporadically Connected Devices (Andras Ferencz, Robert

Szewczyk)

• Numerous Architecture Studies

• Excellent UI Projects– Ink Chat, Nutrition/Excercise Tracker, Rendezvous - Meeting Scheduler


Some Lessons

• Communication is enabling– low-power wireless needs to be like IP

• Virtual Environment is important– Devices connect “into the infrastructure”

» Network HotSync, groupware, centralized e-mail

=> Need lean, clean communication substrate

• “User Service” is fundamental– not just profile and customization info

– routing point for security

• Much room for improvement in devices– trade BW for compute or storage

• Development effort is the limiting factor– OSKI: 1 person for infrastructure, 2 for WorkPad

=> need complete distributed system debugging and simulation environment


Momentum Building

• Millennium provides large-scale testbed

• Ninja architecture allows developers to “Push Services into the Infrastructure”

– scalable, available, customizable

– real services deployed and used in Spring 1999

Gigabit Ethernet

PDAs Cell PhonesFuture Devices

WirelessInfrastructure

DesktopPCs

Servers

Clusters

Massive Cluster


Emerging Agenda

• Endeavor Expedition (14 Faculty)– extend pervasive computing view to “oceanic” proportions

– massive, fluid data storage

– devices everywhere

– fluid software

– streaming data management

– automatic management

– social networking

• Pervasive computing “stamp” on strategic plan

• Causing us to rethink what we need in our environment


University/Industry Roles & Collaboration

• Bold, Rich PostPC Agenda Emerging– Pervasive ‘stamp’ on strategic plan

• New balance of expertise and technology between industry and university– devices, components, networks, applications, users

– foundations for the future vs TTM

• New roles and relationships in collaboration– how do we share space, environment, culture, not just technology

• Fundamentally new demands on the research space– ability to deploy smart spaces on a large scale

– new modes of human interaction

• It’s not just what we build, but how we use it


Discussion

Documents

EECS Systems Research in the Post- PC Era David Culler U.C. Berkeley EECS (ILP) Conference Feb 18, 1999