Chapter 1: Introduction

Shatabdi Roy Moon

Lecturer
East West University
 Computing Environments - Traditional

 Stand-alone general purpose machines

 But blurred as most systems interconnect with others (i.e.,
the Internet)
 Portals provide web access to internal systems
 Network computers (thin clients) are like Web terminals
 Mobile computers interconnect via wireless networks
 Networking becoming ubiquitous – even home systems
use firewalls to protect home computers from Internet
attacks

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 Computing Environments - Mobile

 Handheld smartphones, tablets, etc

 What is the functional difference between them and a
“traditional” laptop?
 Extra feature – more OS features (GPS, gyroscope)
 Allows new types of apps like augmented reality
 Use IEEE 802.11 wireless, or cellular data networks for
connectivity
 Leaders are Apple iOS and Google Android

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 Computing Environments – Distributed
 Distributed computing
 Collection of separate, possibly heterogeneous, systems networked
together
 Network is a communications path, TCP/IP most common
– Local Area Network (LAN)
– Wide Area Network (WAN)
– Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)
– Personal Area Network (PAN)
 Network Operating System provides features between systems
across network
 Communication scheme allows systems to exchange messages
 Illusion of a single system

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 Computing Environments – Client-Server
 Client-Server Computing
 Dumb terminals supplanted by smart PCs
 Many systems now servers, responding to requests
generated by clients
 Compute-server system provides an interface to client
to request services (i.e., database)
 File-server system provides interface for clients to
store

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 Computing Environments - Peer-to-Peer

 Another model of distributed system

 P2P does not distinguish clients and servers
 Instead all nodes are considered peers
 May each act as client, server or both
 Node must join P2P network
 Registers its service with central lookup
service on network, or
 Broadcast request for service and
respond to requests for service via
discovery protocol
 Examples include Napster and Gnutella,
Voice over IP (VoIP) such as Skype

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 Computing Environments - Virtualization
 Allows operating systems to run applications within other OSes
 Vast and growing industry
 Emulation used when source CPU type different from target type (i.e.
PowerPC to Intel x86)
 Generally slowest method
 When computer language not compiled to native code –
Interpretation
 Virtualization – OS natively compiled for CPU, running guest OSes
also natively compiled
 Consider VMware running WinXP guests, each running
applications, all on native WinXP host OS
 VMM (virtual machine Manager) provides virtualization services

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 Computing Environments - Virtualization

 Use cases involve laptops and desktops running multiple OSes for
exploration or compatibility
 Apple laptop running Mac OS X host, Windows as a guest
 Developing apps for multiple OSes without having multiple
systems
 QA testing applications without having multiple systems
 Executing and managing compute environments within data
centers
 VMM can run natively, in which case they are also the host
 There is no general purpose host then (VMware ESX and Citrix
XenServer)

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 Computing Environments - Virtualization

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 Computing Environments – Cloud Computing

 Delivers computing, storage, even apps as a service across a network

 Logical extension of virtualization because it uses virtualization as the
base for it functionality.
 Amazon EC2 has thousands of servers, millions of virtual
machines, petabytes of storage available across the Internet, pay
based on usage
 Many types:
 Public cloud – available via Internet to anyone willing to pay
 Private cloud – run by a company for the company’s own use
 Hybrid cloud – includes both public and private cloud
components

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 Computing Environments – Cloud Computing

 Services:
 Software as a Service (SaaS) – one or more
applications available via the Internet (i.e., word
processor)
 Platform as a Service (PaaS) – software stack ready
for application use via the Internet (i.e., a database
server)
 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – servers or
storage available over Internet (i.e., storage available
for backup use)

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 Computing Environments – Real-Time
Embedded Systems
 Real-time embedded systems most prevalent form of
computers
 Vary considerable, special purpose, limited purpose OS,
real-time OS
 Use expanding
 Many other special computing environments as well
 Some have OSes, some perform tasks without an OS
 Real-time OS has well-defined fixed time constraints
 Processing must be done within constraint
 Correct operation only if constraints met

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 Open-Source Operating Systems
 Operating systems made available in source-code format rather
than just binary closed-source
 Counter to the copy protection and Digital Rights Management
(DRM) movement
 Started by Free Software Foundation (FSF), which has “copyleft
” GNU Public License (GPL)
 Examples include GNU/Linux and BSD UNIX (including core of
Mac OS X), and many more
 Can use VMM like VMware Player (Free on Windows),
Virtualbox (open source and free on many platforms -
http://www.virtualbox.com)
 Use to run guest operating systems for exploration

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End of Chapter 1