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1. D-Goldilocks: Automatic Redistribution of Remote Functionalities for Performance and Efficiency

   https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER48275.2020.9054870  

   An, Kijin; Tilevich, Eli (February 2020, 2020 IEEE 27th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER))

   Distributed applications enhance their execution by using remote resources. However, distributed execution incurs communication, synchronization, fault-handling, and security overheads. If these overheads are not offset by the yet larger execution enhancement, distribution becomes counterproductive. For maximum benefits, the distribution’s granularity cannot be too fine or too crude; it must be just right. In this paper, we present a novel approach to re-architecting distributed applications, whose distribution granularity has turned ill-conceived. To adjust the distribution of such applications, our approach automatically reshapes their remote invocations to reduce aggregate latency and resource consumption. To that end, our approach insources a remote functionality for local execution, splits it into separate functions to profile their performance, and determines the optimal redistribution based on a cost function. Redistribution strategies combine separate functions into single remotely invocable units. To automate all the required program transformations, our approach introduces a series of domainspecific automatic refactorings. We have concretely realized our approach as an analysis and automatic program transformation infrastructure for the important domain of full-stack JavaScript applications, and evaluated its value, utility, and performance on a series of real-world cross-platform mobile apps. Our evaluation results indicate that our approach can become a useful tool for software developers charged with the challenges of re-architecting distributed applications. 

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2. Towards a solver-aware systems architecting framework: leveraging experts, specialists and the crowd to design innovative complex systems

   https://doi.org/10.1017/dsj.2022.7  

   Szajnfarber, Zoe; Topcu, Taylan G.; Lifshitz-Assaf, Hila (January 2022, Design Science)

   Abstract This article proposes the solver-aware system architecting framework for leveraging the combined strengths of experts, crowds and specialists to design innovative complex systems. Although system architecting theory has extensively explored the relationship between alternative architecture forms and performance under operational uncertainty, limited attention has been paid to differences due to who generates the solutions. The recent rise in alternative solving methods, from gig workers to crowdsourcing to novel contracting structures emphasises the need for deeper consideration of the link between architecting and solver-capability in the context of complex system innovation. We investigate these interactions through an abstract problem-solving simulation, representing alternative decompositions and solver archetypes of varying expertise, engaged through contractual structures that match their solving type. We find that the preferred architecture changes depending on which combinations of solvers are assigned. In addition, the best hybrid decomposition-solver combinations simultaneously improve performance and cost, while reducing expert reliance. To operationalise this new solver-aware framework, we induce two heuristics for decomposition-assignment pairs and demonstrate the scale of their value in the simulation. We also apply these two heuristics to reason about an example of a robotic manipulator design problem to demonstrate their relevance in realistic complex system settings. 

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3. Rethinking Home Networks in the Ultrabroadband Era

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS.2019.00185  

   Rabinovich, Michael; Allman, Mark; Brennan, Stephen; Pollack, Brian; Xu, Junbo (July 2019, IEEE 39th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS))

   The advent of ultrabroadband Internet connectivity brings a 2-3 orders of magnitude jump in the capacity of access networks (a.k.a. the “last mile”). Beyond mere capacity increase, this leap represents a qualitative shift in the overall Internet environment. Therefore, we argue that only by seizing the opportunity to re-think the way we structure network applications and services can we realize the full potential ultrabroadband provides. Specifically, with ultrabroadband residential networks, we have the opportunity to re-center our digital lives around our residence, similar to how our physical lives generally center around our homes. To this end, we introduce a new appliance in home networks–a “home point of presence”–that provides a variety of services to the users in the house regardless of where they are physically located and connected to the network. We illustrate the utility of this appliance by discussing a range of new services that both bring new functionality to the users and improve performance of existing applications. 

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4. Uniting the World by Dividing it: Federated Maps to Enable Spatial Applications

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3713082.3730371  

   Bharadwaj, Sagar; Rowe, Anthony; Seshan, Srinivasan (May 2025, ACM)

   The emergence of the Spatial Web -- the Web where content is tied to real-world locations has the potential to improve and enable many applications such as augmented reality, navigation, robotics, and more. The Spatial Web is missing a key ingredient that is impeding its growth -- a spatial naming system to resolve real-world locations to names. Today's spatial naming systems are digital maps such as Google and Apple maps. These maps and the location-based services provided on top of these maps are primarily controlled by a few large corporations and mostly cover outdoor public spaces. Emerging classes of applications, such as persistent world-scale augmented reality, require detailed maps of both outdoor and indoor spaces. Existing centralized mapping infrastructures are proving insufficient for such applications because of the scale of cartography efforts required and the privacy of indoor map data.In this paper, we present a case for a federated spatial naming system, or in other words, a federated mapping infrastructure. This enables disparate parties to manage and serve their own maps of physical regions and unlocks scalability of map management, isolation and privacy of maps. Map-related services such as address-to-location mapping, location-based search, and routing needs re-architecting to work on federated maps. We discuss some essential services and practicalities of enabling these services. 

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5. Designing Domain Specific Computing Systems

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FCCM48280.2020.00052  

   Cabrera, Anthony M.; Chamberlain, Roger D. (May 2020, IEEE 28th Annual International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM))

   Domain specific computing is an idea that has been pro-posed as a path forward given the slowing of Moore’s Law and the breakdown of Dennard scaling. Two fundamental questions include: (1) how does one define a domain; and (2) how does one go about architecting hardware that performs well for that domain? We present our preliminary work towards answering these questions. 

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