IQ-services: resource-aware middleware for heterogeneous applications

Summary form only given. Heterogeneous computing platforms constitute a challenging execution environment for distributed applications. This article presents a 'systems' view of effective platform usage, by demonstrating the need for application software to be continuously 'aware' of the resources currently available on their underlying heterogeneous computing platforms. Our approach to the implementation of resource awareness is one that (1) provides a 'thin' middleware layer of resource aware services that permit applications to react to changes in resource availability and resources to be managed in accordance with application needs, and that (2) develops compiler- and application-level techniques for dynamic 'service morphing', the goal being to make it easy for application-level services to adjust to runtime changes in application needs or in platform resources. The specific results presented in this article are focused on large-data applications, for which the IQ-services "morphing" layer implements the data manipulations necessary to permit wide-area interactive or multimedia applications to proceed smoothly despite variations in underlying computing and network resources. Experimental results demonstrate substantial performance improvements attained by coordinating network-level with service-level adaptations of the data being transported and by permitting end users to dynamically deploy and use application-specific services for manipulating data in ways suitable for their current needs.