Universal Computing @ Berkeley

Activities in the ISRG / Endeavour

David Culler

Randy Katz, Eric Brewer, Anthony Joseph, James Landay and others

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

Philips Visit

8/5/99

8/5/99 Philips 2

Natural Tides of Innovation

Time

Integration

Innovation

Log R

Mainframe

Minicomputer

Personal ComputerWorkstationServer

2/99

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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– smart space– 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

• Novel interfaces and usage models

• Plug it all together and have it DWYM!

• Computer Science focused on problems of scale!

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Outline

• Brief perspective on current activities

• Directions ahead under the Endeavour effort

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ISRG+ Projects

• Millennium Testbed– Culler, Demmel, … (Intel, NSF, UCB, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Nortel)

• Ninja Proactive Infrastructure – Brewer, Culler, Katz, Joseph (ARPA)

• Iceberg: Computer/Telephony Integration– Katz, Joseph (Ericsson, ATT)

• Istore / Telegraph / Oceanic– Patterson, Hellerstein, Kubiatowitz, Brewer

• GUIR - novel user interfaces– Landay

• Universal Computing Lab– IBM

• => Endeavour Expedition to the 21st Century

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Underlying Message

• It’s not just putting together good computer science research projects, its growing a community that “thinks” in the emerging world

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NetworkInfrastructure

GSM BTS

Millennium Cluster

Millennium Cluster

WLANPager

IBMWorkPad

CF788

MC-16

MotorolaPagewriter 2000

Text

Speech

Image/OCR

306 Soda

326 Soda “Colab”

405 Soda

Ericsson

Smart SpacesPersonal Information Management

Fax

Experimental Testbed

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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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Embedded Untrusted Interface?

Key Store

DATEK(Trust Contract)Trusted

Clienthttps

Content Filter(pseudonym)

sRMI

NINJA Infrastructure Services

EmbededUntrusted

Client

https

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One Time Passwd to pseudo-service

• Cannot increasing the security of the channel so decrease the value of the content.

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Informal Collaborative Interfaces

Meet in any environment Take free-form ink noteson Pilots or CrossPads*

1 2

* accumlate, share, transform in the infrastructure

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Building the Bazaar

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

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

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

– Pervade the first-year grad research projects

– bold experiment in the senior UI course

– accelerated the on-going research efforts

• Follow-on Universal Computing Lab

• Endeavour provides the framework

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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

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

=> need complete distributed system debugging and simulation environment

The Endeavour Expedition:Charting the Fluid Information Utility

Randy H. Katz, Principal InvestigatorEECS Department

University of California, BerkeleyBerkeley, CA 94720-1776

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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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Potential Impacts on Commercial Practice• Personal Information Mgmt is the Killer App

– Not corporate processing but management, analysis, aggregation, dissemination, filtering for the individual

• People Create Knowledge, not Data– Not management/retrieval of explicitly entered information,

but automated extraction and organization of daily activities

• Information Technology as a Utility– Continuous service delivery, on a planetary-scale,

constructed on top of a highly dynamic information base

• Beyond the Desktop– Community computing: infer relationships among

information, delegate control, establish authority

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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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InformationUtility

InformationDevices

ApplicationsCollaboration Spaces

High SpeedDecision Making

LearningClassroom

Info AppliancesE-Book Vehicles

PDA

Handset

Laptop Camera

Smartboard MEMS Sensor/Actuator/Locator

Wallmount Display

Generalized UI Support

Proxy Agents

Human Activity Capture

Event Modeling Transcoding, Filtering, Aggregating

Statistical Processing/Inference

Negotiated APIs Self-Organizing Data

Interface Contracts Wide-area Search & Index

Nomadic Data & Processing

Automated Duplication

Distributed Cache Management

Wide-Area Data & Processing

Movement & Positioning

Stream- and Path-Oriented Processing & Data Mgmt

Non-Blocking RMI Soft-/Hard-State Partitioning

8/5/99 Philips

Information Devices

Information Utility

ApplicationsDesIgn

Methodology

MEMS Sensors/Actuators, Smart Dust, Radio Tags, Cameras, Displays, Communicators, PDAs

Fluid Software, Cooperating Components,Diverse Device Support, Sensor-CentricData Mgmt, Always Available, TacitInformation Exploitation (event modeling)

Rapid Decision Making, Learning,Smart Spaces: Collaboration Rooms,Classrooms, Vehicles

Base ProgramOption 1: Sys Arch for Diverse DevicesOption 2: Oceanic Data Utility

Option 4: Negotiation Arch for CooperationOption 5: Tacit Knowledge InfrastructureOption 6: Classroom TestbedOption 7: Scalable Heterogeneous Component-Based Design

Option 3: Capture and Re-Use

Task Structure Task 1: Base Program

Option 1: Systems Architecture for Vastly Diverse Computing Devices

Option 2: Implementation and Deployment of the Oceanic Data Information Utility

Option 3: Sensor-Centric Data Management for Capture and Reuse

Option 4: Negotiation Architecture for Cooperating Components

Option 5: Tacit Knowledge Infrastructure and High-Speed Decision-Making

Option 6: Information Management for Intelligent Classroom Environments

Option 7: Scalable Safe Component-based Design and UI Design Tools

Option 8: Scaled-up Field Trials

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Base Program: Leader Katz

• Broad but necessarily shallow investigation into all technologies/applications of interest

– Primary focus on Information Utility

» No new HW design: commercially available information devices

» Only small-scale testbed in Soda Hall

– Fundamental enabling technologies for Fluid Software

» Partitioning and management of state between soft and persistent state

» Data and processing placement and movement

» Component discovery and negotiation

» Flexible capture, self-organization, info re-use

– Limited Applications

– Methodology: Formal Methods & User-Centered Design

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Option 1: “System Architecture for Vastly Diverse Devices”Leader Culler

• Distributed control & resource management: data mvmt & transformation, not processing

– Path concept for information flow, not the thread

– Persistent state in the infrastructure, soft state in the device

– Non-blocking system state, no application state in the kernel

– Functionality not in device is accessible thru non-blocking remote method invocation

• Extend the Ninja concepts (thin client/fat infrastructure) beyond PDAs to MEMS devices, cameras, displays, etc.

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Option 2: Implementation & Deploy-ment of Oceanic Data Info UtilityLeader Kubiatowicz

• Nomadic Data Access: serverless, homeless, freely flowing thru infrastructure

– Opportunistic data distribution

– Support for: promiscuous caching; freedom from administrative boundaries; high availability and disaster recovery; application-specific data consistency; security

• Data Location and Consistency– Overlapping, partially consistent indices

– Data freedom of movement

– Expanding search parties to find data, using application-specific hints (e.g., tacit information)

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Option 3: Sensor-Centric Data Management for Capture/ReuseLeader Hellerstein

• Integration of embedded MEMS with software that can extract, manage, analyze streams of sensor-generated data

– Wide-area distributed path-based processing and storage

– Data reduction strategies for filtering/aggregation

– Distributed collection and processing

• New information management techniques– Managing infinite length strings

– Application-specific filtering and aggregation

– Optimizing for running results rather than final answers

– Beyond data mining to “evidence accumulation” from inherently noisy sensors

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Option 4: Negotiation Architecture for Cooperating ComponentsLeader Wilensky

• Cooperating Components– Self-administration through auto-discovery and

configuration among confederated components

– Less brittle/more adaptive systems

• Negotiation Architecture– Components announce their needs and services

– Service discovery and rendezvous mechanisms to initiate confederations

– Negotiated/contractural APIs: contract designing agents

– Compliance monitoring and renegotiation

– Graceful degradation in response to environmental changes

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Option 5: Tacit Knowledge Infra-structure/Rapid Decision MakingLeader Canny

• Exploit information about the flow of information to improve collaborative work

– Capture, organize, and place tacit information for most effective use

– Learning techniques: infer communications flow, indirect relationships, and availability/participation to enhance awareness and support opportunistic decision making

• New collaborative applications– 3D “activity spaces” for representing decision-making

activities, people, & information sources

– Visual cues to denote strength of ties between agents, awareness levels, activity tracking, & attention span

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Option 6: Info Mgmt for Intelligent ClassroomsLeader Joseph

• Electronic Problem-based Learning– Collaborative learning enabled by information appliances

• Enhanced Physical and Virtual Learning Spaces– Wide-area, large-scale group collaboration

– Capture interaction once for replay

– Preference/task-driven information device selection

– Service accessibility

– Device connectivity

– Wide-area support

– Iterative evaluation

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Option 7: Safe Component Design and UI Design ToolsLeader Sangiovanni

• Information Appliances as an application of hardware/software codesign

– Co-design Finite State Machines (CFSMs)

– Formal methods to verify safety from faults

– Safe partitioning of components into communicating subcomponents placed into the wide-area

• Model-based User Interface Tools– Information device user interfaces

– Multimodal interface design for variety of devices

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Option 8: Scaled-up Field TrialsLeader Katz

• Testbed Rationale– Study impact on larger/more diverse user community

– Higher usage levels to stress underlying architecture

– Make commitment to true utility functionality

• Increasing Scale of Testbeds– Building-Scale

» Order 100s individuals

– Campus-Scale

» Order 1000s individuals

– City-Scale

» Order 100000 individuals

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Putting It All Together

1. Diverse Devices

2. Data Utility

3. Capture/Reuse

4. Negotiation

5. Tacit Knowledge

6. Classroom

7. Design Methods

8. Scale-up

Devices

Utility

Applications

Fluid Software

Info Extract/Re-use

Group Decision MakingLearning

Component Discovery& Negotiation

Self-Organization

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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)

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F99 Universal Computing Lab w/ IBM

• Intelligence in the infrastructure– Production Ninja cluster servers

• Computing and connectivity wherever you go– compact notebooks

• and in the space around you– kiosk machines with touch-sensitive flat panels

• with novel form factors– more pilots

• plus a mix of wired ethernet, wireless, and IR

• rennovated offices to form a flexible shared space cutting across areas

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Where should Philips and UCB go together?

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Constrained Personal Device & Untrusted Gateway

Key Store

DATEK(Trust Contract)Trusted

Client

Content Filter(pseudonym)

https

EmbededUntrusted

Client

https

sRMIPersonalAppl

CF

NINJA

GWY RMIPXY ST

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Example: Minimal Trader

• Shared secret between user and keystore

• keystore maps to service identity / authentication

• Content filter transcodes to very concise info to pilot

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Uniform Access to Diverse Services

Key Store

RMIPXY

DATEK(Trust Contract)Trusted

Client

Content Filter(pseudonym)

https

EmbededUntrusted

Client

https

sRMIPersonalAppl GWY

CF

NINJA

Trade-R-usTrade-R-us

ST

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Automated “Clients”, ...

Key Store

RMIPXY

DATEK(Trust Contract)Trusted

Client

Content Filter(pseudonym)

https

EmbededUntrusted

Client

https

sRMIPersonalAppl GWY

CF

NINJA

Trade-R-usTrade-R-us

BOT svc

ST

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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