Top

Published in:

2013 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

2. Autonomic Systems

Authors : Philippe Lalanda, Julie A. McCann, Ada Diaconescu

Published in: Autonomic Computing

Publisher: Springer London

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to define the notion of autonomic systems and to introduce related terminology. It discusses the main ideas that are essential to any autonomic computing system, including the concepts of ‘goal’, ‘context’ and ‘self-*’ capabilities.

The chapter also presents the initial motivations behind the autonomic computing initiative. It subsequently discusses the relevance of these motivations in light of both research and real-world implementations since this initiative was launched in the early days of the millennium.

We highlight the most important benefits that autonomic computing promises to bring to the IT domain as well as the equally important challenges that must be surpassed before computer systems can be endowed with autonomic management capabilities. An incremental approach to autonomic computing is presented in this context, proposing a five-step roadmap for progressively transforming current IT systems from their current (non-autonomic) status to full autonomic management support.

Finally, the chapter aims to position the relatively new autonomic computing initiative with respect to similar technological fields, supported by industry, governments or academia, as well as with respect to existing computing domains. Further relevant fields are discussed in the following chapter highlighting the inspiration that autonomic computing has and can draw from existing domains.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

previous chapter Software Engineering to Autonomic Computing

next chapter Sources of Inspiration for Autonomic Computing

Definitions based on combined, adapted input from Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, 11th edition—http://www.merriam-webster.com, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Oxford Dictionaries—http://oxforddictionaries.com

While a discussion on such matters would be well outside the scope of the current publication, it could raise useful considerations regarding the purposes and limitations of the autonomous systems we are going to build.

The i* agent- and goal-oriented modelling framework: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/km/istar

The Tropos project: http://www.troposproject.org

One could say that autonomic computing is a marriage of many subjects; therefore, it is no surprise that many of the early proponents of the field from IBM originated in physics (e.g. Paul Horn), computer systems (David Chess) and agent-based computing (Jeffrey Kephart).

While decreasing numbers of farmers could also be caused by factors other than technology, such as massive food imports, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides data indicating clear increases in farming productivity throughout the US history. For example, data available in this USDA article—National Institute of Food and Agriculture: http://www.csrees.usda.gov/qlinks/extension.html—points out that producing 100 bushels of corn necessitated around 14 labour hours and 2 acres of land in 1945, under 3 labour hours and little over 1 acre in 1987 and less than 1 acre of land in 2002. This and a discussion on bioengineered food are well beyond the scope of this book.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)—English mathematician and philosopher.

Bureau of Labour Statistics—United States Department of Labour: http://www.bls.gov

The fastest-growing groups being may be not surprisingly related to healthcare.

TCG—the Trusted Computing Group^TM (http://www.trustedcomputing.org)—a non-profit organisation formed to develop and promote open, vendor-neutral standards and frameworks for supporting trusted computing technology. The goal of trusted computing technology is to render computer systems safer and less prone to viruses, malware and unauthorised access.

‘Compaq Redefines IT Landscape with Adaptive Infrastructure’, December 2001—http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2001pmc/pr2001120501.html

HP Converged Infrastructure : http://www.hp.com/go/ci

‘Sun Introduces N1 Architecture, Looks To Manage Networks As A Single System’, by Joseph F. Kovar, CRN, September 2002 – http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/18821653/sun-introduces-n1-architecture-looks-to-manage-networks-as-a-single-system.htm

‘Microsoft Announces Dynamic Systems Initiative’, March 2003—http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2003/mar03/03-18dynamicsystemspr.aspx

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/072407-cisco-new-data-center.html

Introduction to Ambient Intelligence from ERCIM News 2001: http://www.ercim.eu/publication/Ercim_News/enw47/intro.html

DARPA: Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency—http://www.darpa.mil

Henry S. Kenyon, ‘Networks: Adapting to Uncertainty’, DARPA, http://www.darpa.mil/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=2570

DARPA ‘s Assured Arctic Awareness (AAA) program: http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2012/03/16a.aspx

DARPA’s announcement (April 2012) of future Robotic Challenge program (to be launched in October 2012): http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2012/04/10.aspx

DARPA’s Urban Challenge, held in November 2007, at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, California, USA—http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge

NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration—http://www.nasa.gov

AutoNav: NASA’s autonomous navigation system uses the relative positions of well-known bright asteroids with respect to a background star for positioning a spacecraft and guiding it to its destination. AutoNav has been successfully tested for guiding the Deep Space 1 spacecraft (1999) and Deep Impact (2005).

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

ESA: European Space Agency—http://www.esa.int

Mars Sample Return mission: http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Aurora/SEM1PM808BE_0.html

NASA’s Autonomous Nano Technology Swarm (ANTS) program—http://ants.gsfc.nasa.gov

NASA’s ANTS Prospecting Asteroid Mission (PAM), expected timeframe: 2020–2025, http://ants.gsfc.nasa.gov/pam.html

Organic computing (OC) initiative: http://www.organic-computing.de. The OC initiative has been launched by a group of researchers from three German universities (Universität Hannover, Universität Karlsruhe and Universität Augsburg). In 2012 the initiative comprised more than 70 researchers from many institutions across Germany and other European and non-European countries. OC has been initially funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the priority programme 1183 organic computing (2004–2011).

Amorphous computing project, defined at MIT: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/amorphous

Multicellular Computing Website: http://www.evolutionofcomputing.org

‘Morphogenetic engineering weds bio self-organisation to human-designed systems’, R. Doursat, PerAda Magazine: Towards Pervasive Adaptation, 18 May 2011—http://www.perada-magazine.eu/view.php?article=003722-2011-05-18&category=Agents

The chemical metaphor as programming paradigm for organic computing: http://users.minet.uni-jena.de/csb/prj/organic

Christman, J.: Autonomy in moral and political philosophy. In: Zalta, E.N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/autonomy-moral

Dey, A.K., Abowd, G.D.: Towards a better understanding of context and context-awareness. In: CHI 2000 Workshop on the What, Who, Where, When, and How of Context-Awareness, The Hague (2000)

Truszkowski, W., et al.: Autonomous and autonomic systems: a paradigm for future space exploration missions. IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part C 36(3), 279–291 (2006)CrossRef

McCann, J.A., Huebscher, M., Hoskins, A.: Context as autonomic intelligence in a ubiquitous computing environment. Int. J. Internet Protoc. Technol. (IJIPT), special edition on Autonomic Computing, Inderscience (2006)

Horn, P.: Autonomic Computing: IBM’s Perspective on the State of Information Technology. New York: IBM T.J. Watson Labs. http://www.research.ibm.com/autonomic/manifesto/autonomic_computing.pdf, October 2001

FitzGerald, J., Dennis, A.: Chapter 1: Introduction to data communications – “a brief history of communications in North America”. In: Business Data Communications and Networking, 10th edn, pp. 5–7. Wiley (2009). ISBN 978-047005575-5

U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.: A History of American agriculture 1776–1990, Washington, DC, 1993. Summaries are also available online as teaching material, such as from the Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/hist-am-west/history.html

Dobson, S., Sterritt, R., Nixon, P., Hinchey, M.: Fulfilling the vision of autonomic computing. Cover feature. IEEE Comput. Soc. 43(1), 35–41 (2010)CrossRef

Sum, A., Khatiwada, I. The Nation’s underemployed in the “Great Recession” of 2007–09. Monthly Labor Review, Nov 2010, http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2010/11/art1full.pdf

10.

Schwartz, E.: Bureau of Labor Statistics reports big drop in tech jobs – almost 50,000 IT positions lost in last 12 months. InfoWorld, 6 Aug 2008, http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/bureau-labor-statistics-reports-big-drop-in-tech-jobs-863

11.

Lockard, C.B., Wolf, M.: Employment outlook: 2010–2020. Occupational employment projections to 2020. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment, Monthly Labor Review, Jan 2012, http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2012/01/art5full.pdf

12.

U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics.: Employment by Occupation. Employment Projections, 1 Feb 2012, http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_102.htm

13.

Henderson, R.: Employment outlook: 2010–2020. Industry employment and output projections to 2020. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review, Industry Employment, Jan 2012, http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2012/01/art4full.pdf

14.

Kephart, J.O., Chess, D.M.: The vision of autonomic computing. IEEE Comput. 36, 41–50 (2003)CrossRef

15.

Ganek, A.G., Corbi, T.A.: The dawning of the autonomic computing era. IBM Syst. J. 42(1), 5–18 (2003)CrossRef

16.

IBM.: An Architectural Blueprint for Autonomic Computing, 3 edn. IBM Whitepaper, June 2005

17.

Parashar, M., Hariri, S.: Autonomic computing: an overview. In: Proceedings of the 2004 International Conference on Unconventional Programming Paradigms, pp. 257–269. Springer, Berlin (2005)

18.

White, S.R., Hanson, J.E., Whalley, I., Chess, D.M., Kephart, J.O.: An architectural approach to autonomic computing. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomic Computing, 17–19 May 2004. IEEE Computer Society, New York (2004)

19.

Huebscher, M.C., McCann, J.A.: A survey of autonomic computing—degrees, models, and applications. ACM Comput. Surveys. (CSUR) 40(3) (2008). ISSN: 0360–0300

20.

Wolf, T.D., Holovoet, T.: A taxonomy for self-properties in decentralised autonomic computing. In: Parashar, M., Hariri, S. (eds.) Autonomic Computing: Concepts, Infrastructure, and Applications, pp. 101–120. CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group (2007)

21.

Hinchey, M.G., Sterritt, R.: Self-managing software. Computer 39(2), 107–109 (2006)CrossRef

22.

Dijkstra, E.W.: Self-stabilizing systems in spite of distributed control. Commun. ACM 17(11), 643–644 (1974). doi:10.1145/361179.361202. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/361179.361202 MATHCrossRef

23.

Smirnov, M.: Autonomic Communication: Research Agenda for a New Communications Paradigm. Technical report, Fraunhofer FOKUS (2004)

24.

Dobson, S., et al.: A survey of autonomic communications. ACM Trans. Auton. Adapt. Syst. 1(2), 223–259 (2006)MathSciNetCrossRef

25.

Kephart, J.O.: Research challenges of autonomic computing. In: ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2005), pp 15–21, St. Louis, MO, USA, May 2005

26.

Miller, B.: The Autonomic Computing Edge: The Role of the Human in Autonomic Systems. IBM developerWorks, Nov 2005, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ac-edge7

27.

Murch, R.: Autonomic Computing. IBM Press/Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs (2004) New Jersey (Chapter 14 – Other Vendors)

28.

Tennenhouse, D.: Proactive computing. Commun. ACM 43(5), 43–50 (2000). doi:10.1145/332833.332837. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/332833.332837 CrossRef

29.

Sterritt, R., Hinchey, M.: SPAACE IV: Self- properties for an autonomous & autonomic computing environment – Part IV A Newish Hope. In: 7th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on Engineering of Autonomic and Autonomous Systems (EASe 2010), 22–26 Mar 2010, University of Oxford, England

30.

Riedel, J., Bhaskaran, S., Desai, S., Han, D., Kennedy, B., McElrath, T., Null, G., Ryne, M., Synnott, S., Wang, T., Werner, R.: Using autonomous navigation for interplanetary missions: the validation of Deep Space 1 AutoNav. In: International Conference on Low-Cost Planetary Missions, Laurel, MD, USA, May 2000, http://hdl.handle.net/2014/14133

31.

Bajracharya, M., Maimone, M.W., Helmick, D.: Autonomy for mars rovers: past, present, and future. IEEE Comput. 41(12), 44–50 (2008)CrossRef

32.

Schmeck, H., Müller-Schloer, C., Çakar, E., Mnif, M., Richter, U.: Adaptivity and self-organisation in organic computing systems. In: Müller-Schloer, C., Schmeck, H., Ungerer, T. (eds.) Organic Computing – A Paradigm Shift for Complex Systems, pp. 5–37. Springer, Basel (2011). e-ISBN 978-3-0348-0130-0. ISBN 978-3-0348-0129-4CrossRef

33.

Abelson, H., Allen, D., Coore, D., Hanson, C., Homsy, G., Knight Jr., T.F., Nagpal, R., Rauch, E., Sussman, G.J., Weiss, R.: Amorphous computing. Commun. ACM 43(5), 74–82 (2000). doi:10.1145/332833.332842. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/332833.332842 CrossRef

34.

Doursat, R., Sayama, H., Michel, O.: Morphogenetic engineering. In: Toward Programmable Complex Systems Series: Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg (2012). ISBN 1244 978-3-642-33901-1

Title: Autonomic Systems
Authors: Philippe Lalanda
Julie A. McCann
Ada Diaconescu
Publisher: Springer London
Book: Autonomic Computing
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-5006-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4471-5007-7

Copyright Year: 2013
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5007-7_2

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Premium Partner