The Aura Project - An Expedition into Invisible Computing

Speaker
Dan Siewiorek
Director, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, and Buhl Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

The effects of Moore’s Law are apparent everywhere: chip density, processor speed, memory cost, disk capacity and network bandwidth are improving relentlessly. As the cost of computing plummets, a resource that we have ignored until now becomes the limiting factor in computer systems—human attention. By “human attention” we mean the ability of a user to focus on his primary task, oblivious to system-generated distractions such as failures and poor performance. Discovering ways to reduce these distractions is a key aspect of the Aura Project. By trading off plentiful computing resources for the scarcest resource, human attention, we hope to create a system whose overall effectiveness is considerably higher than that of typical systems today.

Aura is specifically intended for environments involving wireless communication, wearable or handheld computers, and smart spaces. Human attention is an especially scarce resource in such environments, since the user is often preoccupied with walking, driving or other real-world interactions. In addition, mobile computing poses difficult challenges such as intermittent and variable-bandwidth connectivity, concern for battery life, and client resource constraints imposed by weight and size considerations.

Aura applies two broad concepts to various levels of the system. First, it uses proactivity, or the ability of a system layer to act in anticipation of requests by a higher layer. This is in contrast to today’s systems, where each layer is reactive to the layer above it. Second, Aura is self-tuning: layers adapt by observing the demands made on them and adjusting their performance and resource usage characteristics to match demand. This is in contrast to today’s systems, where the behavior of a system layer is relatively static.

The Aura project involves several faculty whose research spans every level of the system: from the hardware, through the operating system, to applications and end users. This talk will overview the objectives of the Aura project and provide examples of several initial Aura applications.

Speaker's Bio

Daniel Siewiorek is the Buhl professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science. He helped initiate and guide the Cm* project that culminated in an operational 50-processor systems. He was a key contributor in the design of over two dozen commercial computing systems and designed or was involved in designing nine multiprocessor systems. He guided the design of 20 generations of mobile computing systems. Many of the wearable computer systems have were designed by undergraduate students. Two wearable computer system designs have been transitioned to commercial products. In addition, he has authored or co-authored eight books and over 400 papers. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.