Software portability

About: Software portability is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8987 publications have been published within this topic receiving 164922 citations. The topic is also known as: portability.

Emulating an operating system on top of another

Abstract: In this paper, we present the design of an operating-system emulator. This software interface provides the services of one operating system (Oberon) on a machine running a different operating system (Macintosh), by mapping the functions of the first onto equivalent calls to the second. The construction of this emulator proceeded in four distinct phases, documented here through examples from each of these phases. We believe that our four-phase approach can be beneficial whenever a larger software system needs to be adapted from one architecture onto another. In conclusion, we relate some of the lessons learned and propose guidelines for similar engineering projects.

High-Level Fault Tolerance in Distributed Programs

Abstract: We have been developing high-level checkpoint and restart methods for Dome (Distributed Object Migration Environment), a C++ library of data-parallel objects that are automatically distributed using PVM. There are several levels of programming abstraction at which fault tolerance mechanisms can be designed: high-level, where the checkpoint and restart are built into our C++ objects, but the program structure is severly constrained; high-level with preprocessing, where a preprocessor inserts extra C++ statements into the code to facilitate checkpoint and restart; and low-level, where periodically an interrupt causes a memory image to be written out. Because we consider portability (both of our libraries and of the checkpoints they produce) to be an important goal, we focus on the higher-level checkpointing methods. In addition, we describe an implementation of high-level checkpointing, demonstrate it on multiple architectures, and show that it is efficient enough to provide good expected run times with low overhead, even in the case of frequent failures.

Portable communication device for radio communication system

Abstract: A portable communication device capable of realizing an improved portability and an improved maneuverability at the same time. A portable communication device, includes an input unit having a plurality of input keys; a display unit having a plurality of display regions in correspondence to the input keys, for displaying names of functions assigned to the input keys in an arrangement corresponding to a spatial arrangement of the input keys; and a communication unit for making a communication by transmitting and receiving communication data according to a user's input entered by operating the input keys.

A distributed parallel programming framework

Abstract: This paper presents Visper, a novel object-oriented framework that identifies and enhances common services and programming primitives, and implements a generic set of classes applicable to multiple programming models in a distributed environment. Groups of objects, which can be programmed in a uniform and transparent manner, and agent-based distributed system management, are also featured in Visper. A prototype system is designed and implemented in Java, with a number of visual utilities that facilitate program development and portability. As a use case, Visper integrates parallel programming in an MPI-like message-passing paradigm at a high level with services such as checkpointing and fault tolerance at a lower level. The paper reports a range of performance evaluation on the prototype and compares it to related works.

Multicast control of mobile measurement systems

Abstract: This paper proposes M/sup 3/A-Multicast Mobile Measurement Architecture-a software architecture for the development of flexible distributed measurement systems. M/sup 3/A centres at the large level on nowadays Internet technologies such as multicast and mobile computing and at the small level on a Java and Actor-based Framework. M/sup 3/A allows the building of open, portable and dynamically re-configurable systems. The paper describes the architecture and exemplifies it by some examples.