CNS Core: Small: Disentangled System Software

今天的系统软件非常庞大和复杂。虽然它们是高度模块化的，但它们的组件通常是相互依赖和紧密耦合的。因此，系统软件，特别是操作系统（os），变得难以维护、发展、安全更新和可靠运行。在需要可靠性但硬件冗余昂贵或不可能实现的环境中，这尤其成问题。例如，在起搏器和太空探测器中，系统软件更新必须在不停机或丢失执行上下文的情况下进行。即使在数据中心，为了可靠性而复制网络交换机，交换机软件故障和维护更新仍然会导致网络中断。这个项目的关键观点是模块之间的状态溢出是系统软件内部纠缠的根本原因。当一个模块的状态由于与另一个模块的交互而发生持久的变化时，就会发生状态溢出。它在现代系统软件中既普遍又深入。通过最小化状态溢出，该项目旨在解决系统软件的纠缠问题，其中每个组件都可以独立发展，理想情况下是在运行时，而不必担心一个组件的故障会危及其他组件。今天的云服务在仓库数据中心实现了大量冗余和丰富的容错和及时发展。该项目将帮助将这些价值引入冗余和丰富是奢侈品的计算机系统，例如医疗植入物、嵌入式系统，甚至边缘数据中心，从而大大提高其可用性。通过将这些计算机提升到与数据中心相同的水平，该项目将鼓励更多的服务放置在云之外，更接近最终用户，这与当今以云为中心的范式有了根本性的不同。这种转变不仅有可能带来更好的用户体验和新颖的服务，而且还可能使计算大众化。该项目还将通过激发新的语言特性，提出更多的方法来确保静态解缠，以及允许在一个模块接一个模块的基础上对大型软件系统进行增量规范和验证，从而在系统软件研究的其他重要方向上进行交叉授粉。该项目将为本科生和高中生提供一个参与计算机研究的平台，尤其是女性和代表性不足的少数族裔。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Today's system software are large and vastly complex. While they are highly modular, their components are often interdependent and tightly coupled. As a result, system software, especially operating systems (OSes), have become difficult to maintain, evolve, update safely, and run reliably. This is particularly problematic in environments where reliability is necessary, yet hardware redundancy is expensive or impossible. For example, system software updates must be painstakingly applied without downtime or lost execution context in pacemakers and space probes. Even in data centers, where network switches are replicated for reliability, switch software failures and maintenance updates still lead to network outages. The key insight of the project is that state spill between modules is the root cause of entanglement within system software. State spill happens when one module's state undergoes a lasting change as a result of interacting with another module. It is both prevalent and deep in modern system software. By minimizing state spill, this project aims at disentangled system software in which every component can evolve independently, ideally at runtime, without the fear of failures in one component jeopardizing others. Today's cloud services achieve fault tolerance and timely evolution with massive redundancy and abundance in warehouse data centers. This project will help bring these values to computer systems where redundancy and abundance are a luxury, such as medical implants, embedded systems, and even edge data centers, substantially improving their availability. By elevating these computers to the same level as data centers, this project will encourage more services to be placed outside the cloud, closer to end users, a radical departure from today's cloud-centric paradigm. This departure not only has the potential for better user experiences and novel services but also to democratize computing. The project will also cross-pollinate other important directions in systems software research by motivating new language features and suggest more ways to ensure disentanglement statically, and by allowing incremental specification and verification of large software systems on a module-by-module basis. The project will provide a platform to engage undergraduate students and high-school students in computing research, especially women and underrepresented minorities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.