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System architecture directions for networked sensors
- IN ARCHITECTURAL SUPPORT FOR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES AND OPERATING SYSTEMS
, 2000
"... Technological progress in integrated, low-power, CMOS communication devices and sensors makes a rich design space of networked sensors viable. They can be deeply embedded in the physical world or spread throughout our environment. The missing elements are an overall system architecture and a methodo ..."
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Cited by 1789 (58 self)
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Technological progress in integrated, low-power, CMOS communication devices and sensors makes a rich design space of networked sensors viable. They can be deeply embedded in the physical world or spread throughout our environment. The missing elements are an overall system architecture and a methodology for systematic advance. To this end, we identify key requirements, develop a small device that is representative of the class, design a tiny event-driven operating system, and show that it provides support for efficient modularity and concurrency-intensive operation. Our operating system fits in 178 bytes of memory, propagates events in the time it takes to copy 1.25 bytes of memory, context switches in the time it takes to copy 6 bytes of memory and supports two level scheduling. The analysis lays a groundwork for future architectural advances.
The nesC language: A holistic approach to networked embedded systems
- In Proceedings of Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI
, 2003
"... We present nesC, a programming language for networked embedded systems that represent a new design space for application developers. An example of a networked embedded system is a sensor network, which consists of (potentially) thousands of tiny, lowpower “motes, ” each of which execute concurrent, ..."
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Cited by 943 (48 self)
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We present nesC, a programming language for networked embedded systems that represent a new design space for application developers. An example of a networked embedded system is a sensor network, which consists of (potentially) thousands of tiny, lowpower “motes, ” each of which execute concurrent, reactive programs that must operate with severe memory and power constraints. nesC’s contribution is to support the special needs of this domain by exposing a programming model that incorporates event-driven execution, a flexible concurrency model, and component-oriented application design. Restrictions on the programming model allow the nesC compiler to perform whole-program analyses, including data-race detection (which improves reliability) and aggressive function inlining (which reduces resource consumption). nesC has been used to implement TinyOS, a small operating system for sensor networks, as well as several significant sensor applications. nesC and TinyOS have been adopted by a large number of sensor network research groups, and our experience and evaluation of the language shows that it is effective at supporting the complex, concurrent programming style demanded by this new class of deeply networked systems.
Efficient Software-Based Fault Isolation
, 1993
"... One way to provide fault isolation among cooperating software modules is to place each in its own address space. However, for tightly-coupled modules, this solution incurs prohibitive context switch overhead, In this paper, we present a software approach to implementing fault isolation within a sing ..."
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Cited by 777 (12 self)
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One way to provide fault isolation among cooperating software modules is to place each in its own address space. However, for tightly-coupled modules, this solution incurs prohibitive context switch overhead, In this paper, we present a software approach to implementing fault isolation within a single address space. Our approach has two parts. First, we load the code and data for a distrusted module into its own fault do-main, a logically separate portion of the application’s address space. Second, we modify the object code of a distrusted module to prevent it from writing or jumping to an address outside its fault domain. Both these software operations are portable and programming language independent. Our approach poses a tradeoff relative to hardware fault isolation: substantially faster communication between fault domains, at a cost of slightly increased execution time for distrusted modules. We demonstrate that for frequently communicating modules, implementing fault isolation in software rather than hard-ware can substantially improve end-to-end application performance.
Exokernel: An Operating System Architecture for Application-Level Resource Management
, 1995
"... We describe an operating system architecture that securely multiplexes machine resources while permitting an unprecedented degree of application-specific customization of traditional operating system abstractions. By abstracting physical hardware resources, traditional operating systems have signifi ..."
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Cited by 732 (24 self)
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We describe an operating system architecture that securely multiplexes machine resources while permitting an unprecedented degree of application-specific customization of traditional operating system abstractions. By abstracting physical hardware resources, traditional operating systems have significantly limited the performance, flexibility, and functionality of applications. The exokernel architecture removes these limitations by allowing untrusted software to implement traditional operating system abstractions entirely at application-level. We have implemented a prototype exokernel-based system that includes Aegis, an exokernel, and ExOS, an untrusted application-level operating system. Aegis defines the low-level interface to machine resources. Applications can allocate and use machine resources, efficiently handle events, and participate in resource revocation. Measurements show that most primitive Aegis operations are 10–100 times faster than Ultrix,a mature monolithic UNIX operating system. ExOS implements processes, virtual memory, and inter-process communication abstractions entirely within a library. Measurements show that ExOS’s application-level virtual memory and IPC primitives are 5–50 times faster than Ultrix’s primitives. These results demonstrate that the exokernel operating system design is practical and offers an excellent combination of performance and flexibility. 1
Vogels, U-Net: a user-level network interface for parallel and distributed computing, in:
- Proceedings of the 15th ACM Symposium on Operating System Principles, ACM,
, 1995
"... Abstract The U-Net communication architecture provides processes with a virtual view of a network device to enable user-level access to high-speed communication devices. The architecture, implemented on standard workstations using off-the-shelf ATM communication hardware, removes the kernel from th ..."
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Cited by 597 (17 self)
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Abstract The U-Net communication architecture provides processes with a virtual view of a network device to enable user-level access to high-speed communication devices. The architecture, implemented on standard workstations using off-the-shelf ATM communication hardware, removes the kernel from the communication path, while still providing full protection. The model presented by U-Net allows for the construction of protocols at user level whose performance is only limited by the capabilities of network. The architecture is extremely flexible in the sense that traditional protocols like TCP and UDP, as well as novel abstractions like Active Message can be implemented efficiently. A U-Net prototype on an 8-node ATM cluster of standard workstations achieves 15Mbytes/s TCP bandwidth with 1Kbyte buffers and demonstrates performance equivalent to Meiko CS-2 and TMC CM-5 supercomputers on a set of Split-C benchmarks.
LogP: Towards a Realistic Model of Parallel Computation
, 1993
"... A vast body of theoretical research has focused either on overly simplistic models of parallel computation, notably the PRAM, or overly specific models that have few representatives in the real world. Both kinds of models encourage exploitation of formal loopholes, rather than rewarding developme ..."
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Cited by 560 (15 self)
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A vast body of theoretical research has focused either on overly simplistic models of parallel computation, notably the PRAM, or overly specific models that have few representatives in the real world. Both kinds of models encourage exploitation of formal loopholes, rather than rewarding development of techniques that yield performance across a range of current and future parallel machines. This paper offers a new parallel machine model, called LogP, that reflects the critical technology trends underlying parallel computers. It is intended to serve as a basis for developing fast, portable parallel algorithms and to offer guidelines to machine designers. Such a model must strike a balance between detail and simplicity in order to reveal important bottlenecks without making analysis of interesting problems intractable. The model is based on four parameters that specify abstractly the computing bandwidth, the communication bandwidth, the communication delay, and the efficiency of coupling communication and computation. Portable parallel algorithms typically adapt to the machine configuration, in terms of these parameters. The utility of the model is demonstrated through examples that are implemented on the CM-5.
Maté: A Tiny Virtual Machine for Sensor Networks
, 2002
"... Composed of tens of thousands of tiny devices with very limited resources ("motes"), sensor networks are subject to novel systems problems and constraints. The large number of motes in a sensor network means that there will often be some failing nodes; networks must be easy to repopu-late. ..."
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Cited by 510 (21 self)
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Composed of tens of thousands of tiny devices with very limited resources ("motes"), sensor networks are subject to novel systems problems and constraints. The large number of motes in a sensor network means that there will often be some failing nodes; networks must be easy to repopu-late. Often there is no feasible method to recharge motes, so energy is a precious resource. Once deployed, a network must be reprogrammable although physically unreachable, and this reprogramming can be a significant energy cost. We present Maté, a tiny communication-centric virtual machine designed for sensor networks. Mat~'s high-level in-terface allows complex programs to be very short (under 100 bytes), reducing the energy cost of transmitting new programs. Code is broken up into small capsules of 24 instructions, which can self-replicate through the network. Packet sending and reception capsules enable the deploy-ment of ad-hoc routing and data aggregation algorithms. Maté's concise, high-level program representation simplifies programming and allows large networks to be frequently re-programmed in an energy-efficient manner; in addition, its safe execution environment suggests a use of virtual ma-chines to provide the user/kernel boundary on motes that have no hardware protection mechanisms.
Towards an Active Network Architecture
- Computer Communication Review
, 1996
"... Active networks allow their users to inject customized programs into the nodes of the network. An extreme case, in which we are most interested, replaces packets with "capsules" -- program fragments that are executed at each network router/switch they traverse. Active architectures permit ..."
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Cited by 497 (7 self)
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Active networks allow their users to inject customized programs into the nodes of the network. An extreme case, in which we are most interested, replaces packets with "capsules" -- program fragments that are executed at each network router/switch they traverse. Active architectures permit a massive increase in the sophistication of the computation that is performed within the network. They will enable new applications, especially those based on application-specific multicast, information fusion, and other services that leverage network-based computation and storage. Furthermore, they will accelerate the pace of innovation by decoupling network services from the underlying hardware and allowing new services to be loaded into the infrastructure on demand. In this paper, we describe our vision of an active network architecture, outline our approach to its design, and survey the technologies that can be brought to bear on its implementation. We propose that the research community mount a j...
Serverless Network File Systems
- ACM TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTER SYSTEMS
, 1995
"... In this paper, we propose a new paradigm for network file system design, serverless network file systems. While traditional network file systems rely on a central server machine, a serverless system utilizes workstations cooperating as peers to provide all file system services. Any machine in the sy ..."
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Cited by 473 (28 self)
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In this paper, we propose a new paradigm for network file system design, serverless network file systems. While traditional network file systems rely on a central server machine, a serverless system utilizes workstations cooperating as peers to provide all file system services. Any machine in the system can store, cache, or control any block of data. Our approach uses this location independence, in combination with fast local area networks, to provide better performance and scalability than traditional file systems. Further, because any machine in the system can assume the responsibilities of a failed component, our serverless design also provides high availability via redundant data storage. To demonstrate our approach, we have implemented a prototype serverless network file system called xFS. Preliminary performance measurements suggest that our architecture achieves its goal of scalability. For instance, in a 32-node xFS system with 32 active clients, each client receives nearly as much read or write throughput as it would see if it were the only active client.
Extensibility, safety and performance in the SPIN operating system
, 1995
"... This paper describes the motivation, architecture and performance of SPIN, an extensible operating system. SPIN provides an extension infrastructure, together with a core set of extensible services, that allow applications to safely change the operating system's interface and implementation. Ex ..."
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Cited by 458 (16 self)
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This paper describes the motivation, architecture and performance of SPIN, an extensible operating system. SPIN provides an extension infrastructure, together with a core set of extensible services, that allow applications to safely change the operating system's interface and implementation. Extensions allow an application to specialize the underlying operating system in order to achieve a particular level of performance and functionality. SPIN uses language and link-time mechanisms to inexpensively export ne-grained interfaces to operating system services. Extensions are written in a type safe language, and are dynamically linked into the operating system kernel. This approach o ers extensions rapid access to system services, while protecting the operating system code executing within the kernel address space. SPIN and its extensions are written in Modula-3 and run on DEC Alpha workstations. 1
