High-Performance Pervasive Computing

In the area of next-generation mobile and pervasive grids, this chapter addresses the following issues: 1) mechanisms to express location & context-awareness, 2) uniform mechanisms to express parallel and distributed high-performance and fault-tolerant applications, 3) mechanisms for event management, 4) high-performance component model, 5) cost model, in particular with respect to dynamic establishment and management of inter-layer contracts and QoS control. The new programming model, called ASSISTANT, integrates in the high-performance environment ASSIST the features of management and context-awareness. The model consists of three layers from top to bottom: i) application structuring by means of high-performance components composition (called, the RED layer), ii) Manager network (BLUE layer), iii) context interface (the GREEN layer). The Manager construct will allow the application designer to explicitly express adaptivity and context-awareness strategies, by taking into account the information sent by the context interfaces (events, state changes, monitoring of computing and communication resource), and by providing to restructure the application layer from the view point of performance and of functionalities. The context is defined as a proper layer (GREEN) of the whole computing architecture. It is used to spread information about the environment to be controlled (sensors, actuators, the same computing nodes and communication lines) and about application modules (performance measures).