5. Technologies for the NII

The HPCC Program is helping to develop much of the technology underlying the NII in order to address National Challenge problems of significant social and economic impact. This technology includes advanced information services, software development environments, and user interfaces:

5.1. Information Infrastructure Services

These services provide the underlying building blocks upon which the National Challenges can be constructed. They provide layers of increasing intelligence and sophistication on top of the "communications bitways." These include:

• Universal network services. These are extensions to existing Internet technology that enable more widespread use by a much larger user population. They include techniques for improved ease-of-use, "plug and play" network interoperation, remote maintenance, exploitation of new "last mile" technologies such as cable TV and wireless, management of hybrid/asymmetric network bandwidth, and guaranteed quality of service for continuous media streams such as video.

• Integration and translation services. These support the migration of existing data files, databases, libraries, and software to new, better- integrated models of computing such as object-oriented systems. They provide mechanisms to support continued access to older "legacy" forms of data as the models evolve. Included are services for data format translation and interchange as well as tools to translate the access portions of existing software. Techniques include "wrappers" that surround existing elements with new interfaces, integration frameworks that define application-specific common interfaces and data formats, and "mediators" that extend generic translation capabilities with domain knowledge-based computations, permitting abstraction and fusion of data.

• System software services. These include operating system services to support complex, distributed, time-sensitive, and bandwidth-sensitive applications such as the National Challenges. They support the distribution of processing across processing nodes within the network; the partitioning of the application logic among heterogeneous nodes based on their specialized capabilities or considerations of asymmetric or limited interconnection bandwidth; guaranteed real-time response to applications for continuous media streams; and storage, retrieval, and I/O capabilities suitable for delivering large volumes of data to very large numbers of users. Techniques include persistent storage, programming language support, and file systems.

• Data and knowledge management services. These include extensions to existing database management technology for combining knowledge and expertise with data. These include methods for tracking the ways in which information has been transformed. Techniques include distributed databases, mechanisms for search, discovery, dissemination, and interchange, aggregating base data and programmed methods into "objects," and support for persistent object stores incorporating data, rules, multimedia, and computation.

• Information security services. These help in protecting the security of information, enhancing privacy and confidentiality, protecting intellectual property rights, and authenticating information sources. Techniques include privacy-enhanced mail, methods of encryption and key-escrow, and digital signatures. Also included are techniques for protecting the infrastructure (such as authorization mechanisms and firewalls) against intrusion attacks (such as by worms, viruses, and trojan horses).

• Reliable computing and communications services. These include services for non-stop, highly reliable computer and communications systems operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The techniques include mechanisms for fast system restart such as process shadowing, reliable distributed transaction commit protocols, and event and data redo logging to keep data consistent and up-to-date in the face of system failures.

5.2. Systems Development and Support Environments

These will provide the network-based software development tools and environments needed to build the advanced user interfaces and the information-intensive National Challenges themselves. These include:

• Rapid system prototyping. These consist of software tools and methods that enable the incremental integration and cost effective evolution of software systems. Technologies include tools and languages that facilitate end-user specification, architecture design and analysis, and component reuse and prototyping; testing and on-line configuration management tools; and tools to support the integration and interoperation of heterogeneous software systems.

• Distributed simulation and synthetic environments. These software development environments support the creation of synthetic worlds that can integrate real as well as virtual objects that have both visual and computational aspects. Methods include geometric models and data structures; tools for scene creation, description, and animation; integration of geometric and computational models of behavior into a combined system description; and distributed simulation algorithms.

• Problem solving and system design environments. These provide automated tools for software and system design that are flexible and can be tailored to individual needs. Examples include efficient algorithms for searching huge planning spaces; more powerful and expressive representations of goals, plans, operators, and constraints; and efficient scheduling and resource allocation methods. The effects of uncertainty and the interactions of goals will be addressed.

• Software libraries and composition support. Common architectures and interfaces will increase the likelihood of software reuse across different computational models, programming languages, and quality assurance. By developing underlying methodology, data structure, data distribution concepts, operating systems interfaces, synchronization fea ures, and language extensions, scalable library frameworks can be constructed.

• Collaboration and group software. These tools support group cooperative work environments that span time and space. They will make it possible to join conferences in progress and automatically be brought up to date by agents with memory. Methods include network-based video conferencing support, shared writing surfaces and "live boards," document exchange, electronic multimedia design notebooks, capturing design history and rationale, agents or intermediaries to multimedia repositories, and version and configuration management.

5.3. Intelligent Interfaces

Many of the National Challenge applications require complex interfacing between humans and intelligent control systems and sensors, and among multiple control systems and sensors. These applications must understand their environment and react to it. High level user interfaces are needed to satisfy the many different requirements and preferences of vast numbers of citizens who will interact with the NII.

• Human-computer interface. A broad range of integrated technologies will allow humans and computers to interact effectively, efficiently, and naturally. Technologies will be developed for speech recognition and generation; graphical user interfaces will allow rapid browsing of large quantities of data; user-sensitive interfaces will customize and present information for particular levels of understanding; people will use touch, facial expressions, and gestures to interact with machines; and these technologies will adapt to different human senses and abilities. These new integrated, real-time communication modalities will be demonstrated in multimedia, multi-sensory environments.

• Heterogeneous database interfaces. Methods to integrate and access heterogeneously structured databases composed of multi-formatted data will be developed. In a future NII's information dissemination environment, a user could issue a query that is broadcast to appropriate databases and would receive a timely response translated into the context of the query. Examples of multi-formatted data include ASCII text, data that are univariate (such as a one-dimensional time series) or multivariate (such as multi-dimensional measurement data), and time series of digital images (such as a video).

• Image processing and computer vision. Images, graphics, and other visual information will become more useful means of human-computer communication. Research will address the theory, models, algorithms, architectures, and experimental systems for low level image processing through high level computer vision. Advances in pattern recognition will allow automated extraction of information from large databases such as digital image databases. Emphasis is placed on easily accessing and using visual information in real-world problems in an environment that is integrated and scalable.

• User-centered design tools/systems. New models and methods that lead to interactive tools and software systems for user-centered activities such as design will be developed. Ubiquitous, easy-to-use, and highly effective interactive tools are emphasized. A new research area is user- friendly tools that combine data-driven and knowledge-based capabilities.

• Virtual reality and telepresence. Tools and methods for creating synthetic (virtual) environments to allow real-time, interactive human participation in the computing/communication loop will be addressed. Participation can be through sensors, effectors, and other computational resources. In support of National Challenge application areas, efforts will focus on creating shared virtual environments that can be accessed and manipulated by many users at a distance.

Next Section

Table of Contents

Home Page