System challenges for ubiquitous & pervasive computing

The terms ubiquitous and pervasive computing were first coined at the beginning of the 90's, by Xerox PARC and IBM respectively, and capture the realization that the computing focus was going to change from the PC to a more distributed, mobile and embedded form of computing. Furthermore, it was predicted by some researchers that the true value of embedded computing would come from the orchestration of the various computational components into a much richer and adaptable system than had previously been possible. Now, we have made progress towards these aims. The hardware platforms used to implement these systems encapsulate significant computation capability in a small form-factor, consume little power and have a small cost. However, the system software capabilities have not advanced at a pace that can take full advantage of this infrastructure. This paper describes where software and hardware have combined to enable ubiquitous computing, where these systems have limitations and where the biggest challenges still remain.