Micah Beck
Dept. of Computer Science,
University of Tennessee
Activities and Projects
Dr. Beck has been an active researcher in a number of areas of
computer systems, including distributed operating systems, the theory of
distributed computation, compilers, parallel computation, networking and
storage. He is co-Director of the Logistical
Computing and Internetworking Laboratory, and he
serves as chair of the Internet2
Network Storage Working Group.
Federal Funding
Dr. Beck's research on Logistical Computing and Internetworking is funded
by
-
The Department of Energy Office of Science through their
SciDAC initiative (project page),
and
-
The National Science Foundation
through their
NGS and
STI programs.
Logistical Computing and Internetworking (LoCI)
The Logistical Computing and Internetworking (LoCI) Laboratory, headed by Drs. Micah Beck and James S. Plank of the Computer Science Department of the University of Tennessee, is devoted to information logistics in distributed computer systems and networks. Information logistics, a term coined by Dr. Beck and Associate Director Dr. Terry Moore, is the study of the flexible coscheduling of the fundamental physical resources that underpin computer systems: storage, computation, and data transmission. The term is used in analogy to conventional logistics, which focuses on the coscheduling of the movement, storage and processing of military and industrial materiel. The approach taken by LoCI Lab researchers focuses on the application of architectural features of the Internet as a data transmission medium to analogous intrastructure for storage and computation. The core mission of the laboratory is the design and implementation of a Resource Fabric, or generalized information logistics infrastructure, to provide support for advanced applications that are not adequately served by the conventional model of Internetworking.
The Internet Backplane Protocol (IBP) and the exNode
The Internet Backplane Protocol (IBP) is middleware for managing and using remote storage. It was invented to support Logistical Networking in large scale, distributed systems and applications.
One of the important tools in working with IBP in building distributed systems
is the exNode data structure and
the tools based on it.
The Internet2 Distributed Storage
Infrastructure (I2-DSI)
The Internet2 Distributed Storage Infrastructure (I2-DSI) is a replicated hosting platform for Internet content and services. Content is distributed at the network edge, improving latency and reducing bandwidth consumption.