S(o)OS Deliverables

S(o)OS D3.2 First Implementation Set: Protocols - Introduction

At the base of any distributed system lie a set of protocols making it possible for entities to exchange data. These protocols must support the interaction models of the upper layers, as well as provide the correct primitives for optimal operation. If the primitives provided are not adequate to the environment or to the services transacted, the result will be a deficient operation of the entire system. The impact of data encoding, communication model and primitives provided can be a major obstacle for efficient distribution of kernel functions over an loosely coupled, heterogeneous environmental. Even if primitives are adequate, data coding methods must be designed so that latency is minimized while overall impact in the system is kept under strict values.
The challenge of these environments is to devised communication solutions capable of enabling a distributed kernel operating over a environment with more natural unpredictability. Latency guarantees or bandwidth are not within known bounds but can present value covering more than 3 magnitudes. Also, message passing solutions, which are typically proposed by distributed environments, must cope with concurrency over links with different latency, and even message loss due to hardware failure, link failure or link congestion, while providing scheduling assurances and fairness.
Like in the remaining of the S(o)OS work packages, the work and ideas discussed here consider an highly heterogeneous environment, where computational resources (CPU, GP-GPUS, etc.) can have much diverse characteristics and can be located either in the same dye, same board or across an high bandwidth link.

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S(o)OS D3.2 First Implementation Set: Protocols