Temporal Reasoning about Resources for Deadline Assurance in Distributed Systems

Abstract

In an open distributed system, computations can be carried out without statically owned resources, harnessing the collective compute power of the resources connected by the Internet. However, realizing this potential requires efficient and scalable resource discovery, coordination and control, which present challenges in a dynamic, open environment. We present ROTA, a resource-oriented temporal logic, which addresses these challenges by enabling computations to reason about future availability of resources. In ROTA, computational resources are defined over time and space, and represented using resource terms, which specify key attributes of resources. Syntax and semantics of ROTA are described. Theorems are derived to illustrate how the logic can be used to express resource properties of the system in time and space, track resource utilization, and calculate future availability of resources. Particularly, at any time, given a computation, it is possible to evaluate whether its deadline constraint can be assured by the available resources.