Title: Transparent Computing: From Concept to Implementation

Abstract:

Traditional computer systems, such as PCs, are facing several challenges, such as complex maintenance & management, low security, and less mobility. With the increasing demands for service and mobility, the computing infrastructure is looking for new technologies and practices to find solution to this problem. We proposed the concept of transparent computing, in which the software and hardware are decoupled where computation are carried out in client machines, but the storage of software, data, and status are centralized on the central servers and delivered on demand to clients in a streaming way. To implement such a system, we use two key technologies: bare-metal and asymmetric virtual machine monitor (AVMM) and Internet virtual disk. AVMM is dedicatedly designed as a light-weighted partitioning system to enable client virtualization and computation with very little virtualization overhead, especially in support of graphic-intensive applications. The Internet virtual disk whose content is stored on the server and delivered to the client as a traditional block-based hard disk interface via network is used to support back-compatibility and then enable client mobility and service. In this talk, I will start with the concept of transparent computing and then focus on the detailed designs of AVMM. Then, I will give some performance evaluation of our implemented prototype, and compare it with other similar approaches.

Bio:

Dr. Yuezhi Zhou obtained his Ph.D degree in Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University, China in 2004 and now worked as an associate professor at the same department. He worked as a visiting scientist at the Computer Science Department in Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. He was responsible for several national projects, such as NSFC and National Key and High Technological R&D Programs in China, and involved in the research, development and industrialization activities of more than ten projects. Dr. Zhou has won the National Award for Technological Invention (2nd class) and other 4 provincial or ministerial awards, including the Scientific and Technological Progress Award of the Ministry of Education (1st class) and the Ninth Top Patent Award of China in 2006. He was the winner of Mao Yi-sheng Science and Technology Award (Beijing Youth Science and Technology Award) in 2009. He has published over 40 technical papers in international journals or conferences and authored 1 monograph. He received the IEEE Best Paper Award at the 21st IEEE AINA International Conference in 2007. He also has been granted 7 Chinese patents and 1 American patent. Now, Dr. Zhou’s work mainly focuses on Transparent Computing, which aims to achieve a service-oriented and hassle-free computing infrastructure for future networked world.