Transcript EECS Research into the Post-PC Era David Culler U.C. Berkeley Feb 25, 1999 http://postPC.cs.berkeley.edu.

EECS Research into the Post-PC Era
David Culler
U.C. Berkeley
Feb 25, 1999
http://postPC.cs.berkeley.edu
Natural Tides of Innovation
Innovation
Integration
Personal Computer
Workstation
Server
Log R
Minicomputer
Mainframe
Time
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Exciting components
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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.
• Technology spread increases
• So where are we headed in the post-PC era?
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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
Devices
• Everything connected
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Laptops, Desktops
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Imagine
• You walk into a room
• 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
You have complete, secure,
optimized access to local devices
and your private resources
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Internet-Scale Systems Perspective
• ~10 Billion of
Information
Appliances
• ~100 Million
of Stationary
Computers
• ~Million
Scalable
Servers
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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
• Turn devices into appliances
• 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
• Need to develop foundations for next generation
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Seeds sewn in many projects
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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
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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 and a community to take it
forward
• Initial Seed Fall 98 with IBM
– 150+ IBM workpads + lots of cradles + IR + ???
• Initial community
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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
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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
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PalmRouter - Networking Sporadically Connected Devices (Andras Ferencz, Robert
Szewczyk)
• Numerous Architecture Studies
• Excellent UI Projects
– Ink Chat, Nutrition/Excercise Tracker, Rendezvous - Meeting Scheduler
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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
– 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
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Momentum Building
Massive Cluster
Gigabit Ethernet
Clusters
Servers
Wireless
Infrastructure
PDAs
Cell Phones
Desktop
PCs
Future Devices
• Deploy postPC infrastructure throughout building
• Millennium provides large-scale testbed
• Ninja architecture allows developers to “Push
Services into the Infrastructure”
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Oceanic Vision: fluid software
• devices everywhere
• backed by massive, fluid data storage and
composible services
• operating systems for vastly diverse devices
– down to sensors and actuators
• streaming data management
– data derived from sensors and activities, not key entry
– incremental query
• automated negotiation architecture
• derive organization from activities
– social networking
– computational economies
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Roles, Collaboration, and Environment
• Bold, Rich PostPC Agenda Emerging
• New balance of expertise and technology
between industry and university
– devices, components, networks, applications, users
• 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
– experimental wireless networking
– new modes of human interaction
• It’s not just what we build, but how we use it
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