4VP: A Novel Meta OS Approach for Streaming Programs in Ubiquitous Computing

With the rapid improvements in hardware, software and networks, the computing paradigm has also shifted from mainframe computing to ubiquitous or pervasive computing, in which users can focus on their desired services rather than specific computing devices and technologies. However, the emerging of ubiquitous computing has brought many challenges, one of which is that it is hard to allow users to freely obtain desired services, such as heterogeneous OSes and applications via different light-weight devices. We have proposed a new paradigm, called Transparent Computing, to store and manage the commodity programs including OS codes centrally, while stream them to be run in non-state clients. This leads to a service-centric computing environment, in which users can select the desired services on demand, without concerning these services' administrations, such as their installation, maintenance, management, upgrade, and so on. In this paper, we introduce a novel concept: Meta OS to support such program streaming through a distributed 4VP⁺ platform. Based on this platform, a pilot system has been implemented and it supports Windows and Linux environments. We verify the effectiveness of the platform through both real deployments and testbed experiments. The evaluation results suggest that 4VP⁺ platform is a feasible and promising solution for future computing infrastructure in ubiquitous computing.