Collaborative Research: PPoSS: LARGE: Scalable Specialization in Distributed Edge-Cloud Systems – The Extended Reality Case

该项目将为可扩展的、特定于领域的、异构的、分布式边缘/云系统开发设计方法，并严格限制延迟、能量、热功率、计算要求和大小。这项工作将使用分布式多方增强/虚拟/混合现实(统称为扩展现实或XR)体验作为目标并行和分布式应用程序，具有挑战性的体验质量目标、可扩展性要求、设计约束以及多样化和快速发展的算法组件。理想的设计目标和当今最先进的设计之间存在着数量级的差距，这使得这是一个长期存在的多学科研究挑战。该项目汇集了计算机体系结构、编程语言和编译器、系统、安全和隐私以及准确性和正确性方面的工作。它将带来贯穿整个系统堆栈的创新，以提高用户、设备和设备资源数量的体验质量可扩展性、硬件并行性的XR设备性能可扩展性以及系统复杂性的设计方法可扩展性。该项目将以该团队之前发布的ILLIXR系统(第一个开源的端到端单设备XR系统)为基础，通过大量的开源软件制品来传播其研究成果，此外，还将在顶级场所发布出版物和在学术和行业场所进行演讲。高性能、高能效的分布式应用程序，如多方XR(和许多其他应用程序)，有可能对医疗、教育、娱乐、制造、科学等大量社会活动产生变革性影响。该团队将与行业合作伙伴密切合作，建立直接的技术转让渠道。PIS将继续他们过去的记录，即本科生、女性和少数族裔强烈参与研究；领导建立CARE运动；以及其他努力扩大对计算的参与。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will develop design methodologies for a scalable, domain-specific, heterogeneous, distributed edge/cloud system with stringent constraints on latency, energy, thermal power, computational requirements, and size. The work will use a distributed multiparty augmented / virtual / mixed reality (collectively, extended reality or XR) experience as a target parallel and distributed application with challenging quality-of-experience goals, scalability requirements, design constraints, and diverse and fast-evolving algorithmic components. There are orders-of-magnitude gaps between desirable design goals and today's state-of-the-art, making this a long-lived multidisciplinary research challenge. The project brings together work in Computer Architecture, Programming Languages and Compilers, Systems, Security and Privacy, and Accuracy and Correctness. It will result in innovations that cut across the system stack to improve quality-of-experience scalability with the number of users and devices and device resources, XR device performance scalability with hardware parallelism, and design methodologies scalability with system complexity. The project will disseminate its research results through considerable open-source software artifacts, building on the team’s previously released ILLIXR system (the first open-source end-to-end single-device XR system), in addition to publications in top venues and talks in academic and industry venues. High-performance, energy-efficient distributed applications such as multiparty XR (and numerous others) have the potential for transformative impact on a vast number of societal activities such as medicine, education, entertainment, manufacturing, science, and more. The team will work in close collaboration with industry partners for direct technology-transfer avenues. The PIs will continue their past record of strong involvement of undergraduates, women, and minorities in research; leadership in establishing the CARES movement; and other efforts to broaden participation in computing.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.