Challenges and Advantages of Distributed Systems in Mainstream Computing: Exploring The History and Future of Process Migration.

Abstract

Process Migration is a fundamental component of modern loosely-coupled distributed systems. Heterogeneous distributed systems in the High Performance Computing (HPC) services industry provide the foundation of the modern internet. Despite its success in large scale applications, modern distributed solutions for process sharing have not been brought to mainstream personal computers. As pervasive computing as a trend continues to grow, introducing process migration techniques in small scale environments promises several advantages. Local devices forming a processing grid would allow for greater utilization and optimization of finite resources, like mobile device battery life, CPU cycles, and file storage and enables process persistence. This work discusses the founding philosophies of modern distributed computing techniques as well as the history of distributed systems, their implementations and ways that pervasive and distributed computing will shape the digital future.