Technological Landscape for the next 10 Years: New Generation Operating System Platform Services

Follow-up with the previous post, we now shift our focus to the New Generation Operating System Platform Services .

The new generation OS platform services are designed to facilitate application developers to build cloud-based lifestyle-aware applications efficiently. The primary reason to design a new generation OS is for efficiency purpose. Although cloud-based applications can build lifestyle logics on top of a general purpose operating system, building a specialized operating system primarily for cloud-based lifestyle-aware application will help to manage local-to-cloud resources much more efficiently. Similar to real-time embedded systems, they require specialized OS to meet their specific application requirements. Lifestyle-aware applications that make use of Unified Computing Hardware Infrastructure will demand the same level of specializations in which the general purpose OS is difficult to satisfy.

In my opinion, the New Generation OS Platform Services is composed of 3 building blocks namely Urban Sensing Technology, Augmented Reality Technology and Social Networking Technology. Urban Sensing Technology and Augmented Reality Technology are designed to describe and understand the environment in which a particular individual is living, whereas the Social Network Technology is designed to enrich the interactions and connectivities between people. As a whole, they provide some good indications about an individual lifestyle.

This is my speculation of the development trend for the operating system that is specifically designed for the unified computing hardware infrastructure. Although, it is far away from be a solid idea but I just can't stop to imagine that will happen some days. :)

Technological Landscape for the next 10 Years: Unified Computing Hardware Infrastructure

Follow up to the previous post, the first and the most important element I would like to elaborate is the unified computing hardware infrastructure. It is composed of 3 building blocks: Cloud Computing, Sophisticated Network, and Mobile Device. This infrastructure allows a more efficient usage of computing power since the intensive computation is now centralized and shared.

Cloud Computing promises to provide a cost-effective computing experience for everyone to use. It hides some complexities of scalability, elasticity, availability and manageability in the cloud infrastructure providers (e.g. Amazon EC2). It facilitates the development and deployment of new applications. Since resources are shared among applications, it could bring a lot of saving in terms of heat generated, electricity and space.

If the responsibility of computing is centralized in the Cloud, there is an urgent need to upgrade to a more sophisticated network (wired and wireless) in order to take advantage of the computing resources available in the cloud. Particularly, the security of the network becomes one of the most important aspects in which ,I think, there is a need to separate two networks: public network and private network. The public network is what we currently have namely the Internet. The private network is secured and it is used to transmit important information such as your bank account information. It also serves as a medium to transmit and maintain identity of each individual. The efficiency and QoS of the Internet might determine the feasibility of the idea of Unified Computing Hardware Infrastructure.

Lastly, the mobile device which includes the latest generation of smartphones and netbooks can augment the interaction between the individuals through the usage of the cloud computing and sophisticated network. Mobile applications that require a lot of computation power will be processed in the Cloud and the results of the computation will be transmitted to the mobile devices without draining the precious battery power in the mobile device. The usage of cloud computing with the mobile device is possible only if there is a sophisticated network which can act as a medium to transmit information between the Cloud and the mobile device in near real-time.

This is a summary of what I believe will be future of computing infrastructure. Hopefully, the summary conveys enough information so that you can understand my point of view and enjoy it. :)

My Mental Image of the Technological Landscape for the next 10 Years

It is always interesting to look at how the past and present innovations affect the way people interact with each other. For example, Email, ICQ, Blogs and MSN are the past innovation that has successfully demonstrated the possibility of establishing communication channels between the individuals inside the virtual world defined by the Internet. The present innovations like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking go one step further by shedding lights on the possibility that people can actually socialize/interact in the virtual world using their virtual identity. Despite the fact that the past and present innovations are useful tools to keep up-to-date with friends and family, they are far from being perfect. For instance, the virtual identity of each individual is quite monotone in a sense that the available information of each individual is limited by the options defined by the application developers. Additionally, the virtual world created by those applications is always lagging behind the real world. The information on those applications are usually outdated and it does not necessarily represent the actual intention of a particular individual. In summary, the information provided on those applications can be used to spot predefined macro trends but it cannot be used to predict micro trends (i.e. the changing lifestyle of each individual). Being able to predict the micro trends is very valuable since it gives accurate information about each individual so that their concerns and needs can be identified and addressed collectively as soon as possible. In my opinion, this could only happens if the real world and virtual world converge into a single world.

Although the real world and the virtual world will not or never converge, a step to this direction will certainly makes life more interesting (IMHO). I believe that some emerging technologies will be the cornerstone for the development in this direction. They will define the landscape about how information can be collected, shared and stored efficiently in near real-time. I can foresee that the landscape could be composed of three elements namely theUnified Computing Hardware Infrastructure, the New Generation OS Platform Services that run on top the infrastructure and the New Generation Applications that make use of the services to deliver a new set of interactions between human and computer.

You might already recognize that there is actually no new element from what you already know about computers. You are absolutely right because this is not about revolution, it is about how to make use of the things we already know in a more efficient and creative ways . The most important ideas to capture are that 1) the responsibility of computing is centralized in several areas, 2) there are a few popular applications that are so important that OS vendors will build them into their OS platform directly instead of treating them as a set of running applications, 3) a new and interesting set of applications will be emerged due to the changes in the OS platform. In the next few posts, I will describe each element in details. Hope you enjoy it as well!

References:

1. Cloud Computing Will Usher in a New Era of Science Discovery - HPCWire