I worked with Prof. Kane Kim and several of the students in the DREAM Lab to get a powerful object-oriented Time-Triggered Message-Triggered Object (TMO) middlewareefficiently working on
Linux and across the OptIPuter link to UCSD. In addition, because my
cluster runs Linux, has several network interfaces, including MPI over
Myrinet, and is an OptIPuter endpoint, it served as an ideal testbed for
development and testing of wide-area real-time distributed computing
with TMO.
Because of TMO’s use of global time, which can be supplied by GPS
nearly anywhere, we can precisely coordinate actions on machines
separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. This is especially
important when the control loop for real-time systems may be faster than
the cross-country communications delay. Speed of light delay over even
short distances, such as from UCI to UCSD, can be a couple of
milliseconds, while cross-country delays are more than 10 ms. Because of
TMO and its global time coordination ability, we can precisely schedule
message reception and other events on distant machines. This powerful
middleware enables wide-area, real-time distributed computing, yet is
easy to use and program.
Our work has resulted in several publications:
K. H. Kim, S. Jenks, L. Smarr, A. Chien, and L.-C. Zheng, “A
Framework for Middleware Supporting Real-Time Wide-Area Distributed
Computing,” in Proceedings of Tenth IEEE International Workshop
on Object-Oriented Real-Time Dependable Systems (WORDS 2005),
Sedona, AZ, 2005.
S. F. Jenks, K. Kim, E. Henrich, Y. Li, L. Zheng, M. H. Kim, H.-Y.
Youn, K. H. Lee, and D.-M. Seol, “A
Linux-Based Implementation of a Middleware Model Supporting
Time-Triggered Message-Triggered Objects,” in Proceedings of 8th
IEEE International Symposium on Object-oriented Real-time distributed
Computing (ISORC 2005), Seattle, WA, 2005.
K. H. K. Kim and S. F. Jenks, “The TMO scheme for wide-area
distributed real-time computing and distributed time-triggered
simulation,” in Proceedings of NSF Next Generation Software Workshop
held in conjunction with the International Parallel & Distributed
Processing Symposium, (Long Beach, California, USA), March 2007.
S. F. Jenks, K. Kim, Y. Li, S. Liu, L. Zheng, M. H. Kim, H.-Y.
Youn, K. H. Lee, and D.-M. Seol, “A Middleware Model Supporting
Time-Triggered Message-Triggered Objects for Standard Linux Systems,”
Real-Time Systems, To Appear.