MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Mobile Computing: Hype or Harbinger

Professor Mahadev Satyanarayanan
Carnegie Mellon University

Thursday, November 4, 1999
3:30 PM (refreshments 3:15)
Room 54-100
LCS Distinguished Lecture

Abstract

Hardly a day passes without news of another development in wireless communication, wearable computers, palmtops, or some other aspect of mobile computing. Yet, in spite of this frenzied activity, thoughtful computer scientists have nagging doubts about the intellectual depth of this field. The shrinking of machines and the transmission of data without wires may be technical marvels. But is there anything more to mobile computing? Is it a passing fad, or will it be the source of enduring new challenges in computer science?

I will address these questions by first examining the fundamental constraints of mobile information access. These constraints lead to the realization that adaptation is a critical requirement for mobility. Providing support for adaptation has many consequences that pervade system design. I will briefly report on our experience with Coda and Odyssey, two experimental systems for mobile information access. The experience we have gained with these systems reveals a number of deep conceptual issues that have relevance outside mobile computing. The concluding part of this talk will discuss these issues and explore their long-term implications.

MAHADEV SATYANARAYANAN

Professor Satyanarayanan is an experimental computer scientist who has pioneered research in the field of mobile information access. An outcome of this work is the Coda File System, which provides application-transparent support for disconnected and weakly-connected operation. Key ideas from Coda have been incorporated by Microsoft into a forthcoming release of the Windows NT file system. More recently, Satyanarayanan and his research group have been working on application-aware adaptation, a more general approach to mobile information access. This concept is being explored in the context of a new platform, Odyssey.

Prior to his work on Coda and Odyssey, Satyanarayanan was a principal architect and implementor of the Andrew File System, a location-transparent distributed Unix file system that addressed issues of scale and security. Later versions of this system have been commercialized and incorporated into the Open Software Foundation's DCE offering.

Satyanarayanan is the Carnegie Group Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He received the PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon, after Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He has been a consultant and advisor to many industrial and governmental organizations.