Seminars & Events

Computation Institute Lunch Presentation
"Simple Cyberinfrastructure"

DATE: January 22, 2009
TIME: 12:00 pm
SPEAKER: Saul Youssef, Center for Computational Science, Boston University
LOCATION: Room A134, Bldg. 221, Argonne National Laboratory, RI 405, 5640 S. Ellis Ave., University of Chicago

Description:
In an ideal cyberinfrastructure, researchers would be able to use diverse,
distributed computing resources in a simple coherent way, with guaranteed security and efficient use of shared resources in accordance with the wishes of the owners of the resources. Our strategy for approaching this ideal is to first find the simplest structure within which these goals can plausibly be achieved. This structure, we find, is essentially uniquely given by a particular freely constructed recursive distributive lattice. Minor syntactic adjustments to the resulting algebra yields a simple language resembling a UNIX shell, a concept of execution and an interprocess protocol. Persons, organizations and servers within the system express their interests explicitly via a hierarchical currency. The currency provides a common framework for treating authentication, access control and resource sharing as economic problems while also introducing a new dimension for improving the infrastructure over time by designing system components which compete with each other to earn the currency. We explain these results, demonstrate an implementation called "egg" and point out areas where more work is needed.

More Information:
Lunch will be provided at both locations
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