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Scalable, Secure Computing Environments

The second area of fundamental importance for this project is systems and languages that support scalable, secure computing. Our vision of computation distributed dynamically across multiple nodes on the network requires significant advances in this arena. Four research groups are investigating questions in this area. Schneider, van Renesse and Morrisett are exploring fault tolerance and security issues for mobile code. Birman is developing mechanisms for hardening systems that use group communication between off-the-shelf components. Von Eicken is investigating language and operating system support for secure interoperability of network appliances. Smith is building language and compiler tools for writing and executing programs that process multimedia data.

A central theme in this area is code mobility – the ability for computational agents (such as "applets" and "servlets") to move around in the network. Code mobility offers the potential for high performance in the presence of resource limitations (e.g., network bandwidth, disk space and server cycles). For example, the kind of efficient Web-based video editing that Smith proposes relies upon mobile agents. However, code mobility raises new concerns in the areas of fault tolerance and security. The Safe Language Kernel, TACOMA and Ensemble projects are all addressing issues of fault tolerance and security.

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Last modified on: 07/30/99