Virtual BUS: a network technology for setting up distributed resources in your own computer

Abstract

A novel distributed-resource abstraction environment is introduced. You can access any resource in a computer network as a memory mapped I/O device, as if it was attached to the local bus of your PC. This network technology gives us several benefits. From the application development viewpoint, no network-related programming is required, and we don't need to modify the applications even if the network topologies and protocols are changed. On the other hand, network maintenance and upgrading can be done anytime without worrying about the application users, because the environment completely separates or hides the network from the applications. The API (Application Program Interface), a resource abstraction mechanism, and a directory service are implemented. In addition, a reconfigurable hardware technology is adopted to perform autonomous network control using a lour layer protocol. Furthermore, we introduce a testbed that allows heterogeneous resources to be utilized, and demonstrate the feasibility of our concept using some applications.