Where is the breakthrough of the next IT boom? Technology pundits have pondered and speculated, but IIT's Professor Xian-He Sun showed IIT students and faculty the answer in his special presentation on the past, present and future of pervasive and grid computing, an event organized by the IIT Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the IIT Chapter of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, and the MCFC Academic Computing Committee.

On Thursday, March 4th at 12:30pm, in the McCloska Auditorium of the MTCC, Professor Peter Lycos of BCPS began the much anticipated event by delivering a brief introduction of Sun, his background, his past and present jobs, positions, research projects and awards. For a busy and enthusiastic man such as Sun, this took some time. About 60 attendees were seated by the time Sun began his lecture, as the auditorium lights dimmed and the projector beam shone onto the screen.

After a short and lively introduction of his own, Sun began by explaining a slide on the Scalable Computing Software and the Distributed Optical Grid, depicting a map of Illinois showing various universities and institutions, including IIT of course, linked by a vast network of I-WIREs and OMNIs. Following this little appetizer, he outline the actual body of the presentation.

He explained the "three waves" of the computing revolution and the evolution of computing, emphasizing the twin maxims of "Big gets even bigger" and "Small gets even smaller and more connected", and describing the role of grid, distributed and pervasive computing in the next wave of the computing revolution. After a briefing on the topic of embedded systems, Sun described the nature of pervasive computing, illustrated the applications of the same, and talked about current projects and the technical and software challenges posed by the implementation of this technology.



Sun then explained the concepts, roles, applications and challenges of "Context Awareness" in embedded systems and the different kinds of pervasive computing mobility, followed by an examination of a case study and a brief note on the Scarlet System. As the audience listened attentively, he talked at length about distributed and grid computing, and then about Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) and Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI), as well as resource management and the resource lifecycle, illustrating these concepts with colorful diagrams.

He summarized by stating that the ultimate success of information technology will be signaled by the "disappearance" of the computer itself, as well as some other intriguing observations and predictions. Finally, Sun answered some commonly-asked questions, touched on the subject of the topic-relevant IPRO, and concluded his lecture, but not before leaving the audience with his tantalizing vision of the future of computing.

Sun's closing notes were followed by hearty applause and a few final words from Lykos, after which much of the audience milled around the hors d'ouvres in the ballroom, while some stayed behind to make further conversation with Sun. Slides of this presentation are available at the ACM-IIT website (see below).

ACM-IIT is a registered IIT student organization, a registered student chapter of ACM, and is dedicated to academic and professional advancement in computer science and information technology. Upcoming ACM events include the Microsoft ImagineCup 2004, a Motorola lecture on Wireless World Research Forum by Ken Crisler, CS Peer Advising, the AIPCL Chicagoland programming contest, a company tour of STG, a day-long fun-filled Cyberfest event with LAN games, RobotWars and CodeWars, and more. Visit the ACM-IIT website at http://www.iit.edu/~acm/ for more about these events and other ACM activities.

Dr. Sun's Homepage [ http://www.cs.iit.edu/~sun ]

SCS lab's homepage [ http://www.cs.iit.edu/~scs ]