9413854 Aggarwal The acquired equipment will serve as a testbed for research on various aspects of distributed computing using high bandwidth interconnections. There are three components to the proposed research: interfacing workstations to high bandwidth networks using custom interfaces; development of systems software to capitalize on the high-speed links; and exploration of applications that exploit the capabilities of the high bandwidth network. The equipment to be acquired includes high-end workstations, custom interface components for fiber-optic based high-speed links, and video/audio peripherals for multi-media applications. Specific projects involving the research testbed are: (1) physical interface design to the high-speed links, design of low-level protocols for kernel level communication primitives and the development of the necessary operating systems services for reliable distributed computing; (2) design of software to implement a distributed shared memory environment for parallel computing; (3) investigation of a new paradigm for client/server computing using a set of tightly coupled coordinating processes; (4) investigation of various aspects of information retrieval and browsing in distributed databases; and (5) exploration of issues in meeting real-time constraints for distributed applications such as multi-media conferencing and rendering of scenes using distributed ray tracing. ***
