Abstract
The Heterogeneous Computer Systems project at the University of Washington has over the past two years designed and implemented a software infrastructure to accommodate heterogeneous systems. We have addressed an environment consisting of a potentially large number of different system types but only a few instances of each type. Such an environment arises naturally in research and other settings where individual systems are obtained for the specialized services they provide. Our goal is not to mask the heterogeneous nature of the systems by imposing a standard interface on them, but rather to provide loose integration through a set of network services. In particular, we provide remote procedure call, naming, filing, remote computation, and mail services accessible from all system types.
This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants DCR-8352098, DCR-8420945, and CCR-8611390, by an IBM Faculty Development Award, by the Xerox Corporation University Grants Program, and by the Digital Equipment Corporation External Research Program.
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Zahorjan, J., Lazowska, E.D., Levy, H.M., Notkin, D., Sanislo, J. (1988). Accommodating heterogeneity. In: Nehmer, J. (eds) Experiences with Distributed Systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 309. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-19333-2_5
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