Improving the Performance, Scalability and Reliability of the Linux Operating System. This project aims to improve the scalability of the Linux operating system to large systems without loss of performance on small, embedded, systems. It will improve Linux robustness and security by de-privileging particularly error-prone code, such as device drivers, without undue impact on performance. It will improve configurability and ease tuning by making critical components, such as processor, disk and me ....Improving the Performance, Scalability and Reliability of the Linux Operating System. This project aims to improve the scalability of the Linux operating system to large systems without loss of performance on small, embedded, systems. It will improve Linux robustness and security by de-privileging particularly error-prone code, such as device drivers, without undue impact on performance. It will improve configurability and ease tuning by making critical components, such as processor, disk and memory schedulers, pluggable and their policies controllable at user level. It will investigate the feasibility and benefits of user-level file systems and processor and memory scheduling and will demonstrate that these can improve system reliability without undermining performance.Read moreRead less
Operating systems meeting the challenges of modern computer architectures. This project will develop operating system techniques that allow extracting the best performance out of modern computer architectures. It will concentrate on the latest architecture, Itanium, whose innovative features make it a particular challenge for operating systems. The techniques will be implemented in the open source Linux operating system and will result in significantly reduced operating system overheads and enh ....Operating systems meeting the challenges of modern computer architectures. This project will develop operating system techniques that allow extracting the best performance out of modern computer architectures. It will concentrate on the latest architecture, Itanium, whose innovative features make it a particular challenge for operating systems. The techniques will be implemented in the open source Linux operating system and will result in significantly reduced operating system overheads and enhanced application performance.Read moreRead less
Economic Scheduling for Efficient Management of Clusters and their Cooperative Federation. Clusters of commodity computers have emerged as mainstream parallel and distributed platforms for high-performance computing. They are presented together as a single, unified resource to the end users by middleware technologies such as resource management and scheduling (RMS) systems. However, existing cluster RMS systems continue to use system centric models rather than utility models for the management a ....Economic Scheduling for Efficient Management of Clusters and their Cooperative Federation. Clusters of commodity computers have emerged as mainstream parallel and distributed platforms for high-performance computing. They are presented together as a single, unified resource to the end users by middleware technologies such as resource management and scheduling (RMS) systems. However, existing cluster RMS systems continue to use system centric models rather than utility models for the management and allocation of resources. There is also little emphasis on the construction of a cooperative federation of clusters to facilitate transparent sharing of resources. To enhance the value delivered by shared clusters, we propose the use of computational economy metaphor in resource management. This project aims to develop (A) computational economy based scheduling policies for allocation of resources and (B) a software infrastructure for creation of cooperative federation of distributed clusters.Read moreRead less
A safe and efficient multi-language component framework based on dynamic compilation. Components are a versatile mechanism for the construction of extendible systems and for improved code reusability. Emerging environments like Microsoft's .NET support the interaction of components written in different programming languages. To date, such systems do not adequately isolate components which therefore must trust each other. This is unacceptable for components loaded across the Internet. We will dev ....A safe and efficient multi-language component framework based on dynamic compilation. Components are a versatile mechanism for the construction of extendible systems and for improved code reusability. Emerging environments like Microsoft's .NET support the interaction of components written in different programming languages. To date, such systems do not adequately isolate components which therefore must trust each other. This is unacceptable for components loaded across the Internet. We will develop a framework for secure execution of component software, based on hardware-enforced protection domains. To minimize the resulting runtime overheads we will provide a component model with lightweight context switching. A novel typed intermediate language and dynamic compilation techniques will offer complementary optimisations.
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Mapping Trusted Systems Technologies to E-security Requirements. A new software based approach, strongly guided by national and international security standards based upon mandatory access control, is required to simplify for management the protection of their information infrastructure. This will be in the form of a security definition toolset aligned to trusted systems technologies currently under consideration internationally. No such trusted system has been developed to address current comme ....Mapping Trusted Systems Technologies to E-security Requirements. A new software based approach, strongly guided by national and international security standards based upon mandatory access control, is required to simplify for management the protection of their information infrastructure. This will be in the form of a security definition toolset aligned to trusted systems technologies currently under consideration internationally. No such trusted system has been developed to address current commercial IT product environments. The safety and security of information systems against attack and illicit usage form an essential component of ?National Information Infrastructure Protection (NIIP)?, a move to better ?e-security?. Existing commercial (untrusted) operating systems lack the critical security bases for e-security making e-applications vulnerable to tampering and bypass which can cause failures in overall system security.Read moreRead less
Extending a family of garbage collectors. Garbage collection is a key component in the automatic management of storage in computer systems. It is an essential property of modern programming systems that frees the programmer from a significant error-prone task. Our interest is in garbage collection in distributed systems involving a number of networked computers. Using our novel construction methodology, we have jointly produced a family of collection algorithms that are significantly simpler and ....Extending a family of garbage collectors. Garbage collection is a key component in the automatic management of storage in computer systems. It is an essential property of modern programming systems that frees the programmer from a significant error-prone task. Our interest is in garbage collection in distributed systems involving a number of networked computers. Using our novel construction methodology, we have jointly produced a family of collection algorithms that are significantly simpler and more efficient than previous work. Here we wish to extend this family to operate effectively in a specific architecture increasingly favoured by many modern distributed high-performance computing systems.Read moreRead less
Software Quality Improvement Through Static Analysis and Annotation. Software forms the basis of critical infrastructure that supports industries such as electronic commerce. Flaws in the software can lead to failure of the overall system, or allow the security mechanisms of the software to be by-passed. This project is developing methods to improve the quality of software by finding common flaws that lead to security vulnerabilities or runtime failures. Within Australia, it is estimated that th ....Software Quality Improvement Through Static Analysis and Annotation. Software forms the basis of critical infrastructure that supports industries such as electronic commerce. Flaws in the software can lead to failure of the overall system, or allow the security mechanisms of the software to be by-passed. This project is developing methods to improve the quality of software by finding common flaws that lead to security vulnerabilities or runtime failures. Within Australia, it is estimated that there are approximately 75,000 software developers who make substantial use of C/C++ and who could benefit from the availability of better automatic static analysis tools to improve both the quality of the code they produce and their productivity.Read moreRead less
Dynamic Load Balancing for Systems under Heavy Traffic Demand and High Task Size Variation. Current computer systems cannot cope with extremely heavy traffic demands. A solution to such a difficult problem is to dynamically balance the load across the system's servers. Several solutions have been proposed and demonstrate advances in certain limited conditions (e.g. uniform distribution). However fundamental research work must be undertaken beyond the current way of dealing with the core issues o ....Dynamic Load Balancing for Systems under Heavy Traffic Demand and High Task Size Variation. Current computer systems cannot cope with extremely heavy traffic demands. A solution to such a difficult problem is to dynamically balance the load across the system's servers. Several solutions have been proposed and demonstrate advances in certain limited conditions (e.g. uniform distribution). However fundamental research work must be undertaken beyond the current way of dealing with the core issues of load balancing. Accounting for realistic conditions is a theoretical and practical challenge. This project aims at developing theoretical and computational models for dynamic task distribution for the studied systems. The benefits include substantial improvement of the system response time.Read moreRead less
Megha: Utility-Oriented Federation of Cloud Computing Environments for Scaling of Application Services. In the next 20 years, service-oriented computing will play an important role in shaping the industry, impacting the way business is conducted and how services are delivered and managed. This paradigm will have major impact on the services economy, which contributes significantly towards Australia's GDP. With the increased demand for delivering services to a large number of users, providers are ....Megha: Utility-Oriented Federation of Cloud Computing Environments for Scaling of Application Services. In the next 20 years, service-oriented computing will play an important role in shaping the industry, impacting the way business is conducted and how services are delivered and managed. This paradigm will have major impact on the services economy, which contributes significantly towards Australia's GDP. With the increased demand for delivering services to a large number of users, providers are looking for novel ways of hosting their application services on Clouds at low cost while meeting users' quality of service expectations. This project develops novel utility-oriented technologies for federation of Clouds to support scaling of application services and thereby, transform the Australian service industry and economy.Read moreRead less
Service Level Agreement (SLA)-oriented Resource Allocation for Data Centers and Cloud Computing Systems. In the next 20 years, service-oriented computing will play an important role in shaping the industry and the way business is conducted and services are delivered and managed. This paradigm will have major impact on service economy, which contributes significantly towards Australia's GDP. The service sector, which includes health, financial, and government services, involves significant intera ....Service Level Agreement (SLA)-oriented Resource Allocation for Data Centers and Cloud Computing Systems. In the next 20 years, service-oriented computing will play an important role in shaping the industry and the way business is conducted and services are delivered and managed. This paradigm will have major impact on service economy, which contributes significantly towards Australia's GDP. The service sector, which includes health, financial, and government services, involves significant interaction between clients and providers. With increasing dependency on ICT technologies in their realization, major advances are required in service-driven allocation of resources to competing applications. This project develops technologies for Service Level Agreement (SLA)-based allocation of Data Center/Cloud computing system resources to applications.Read moreRead less