Analysis and a case study of transparent computing implementation with UEFI

Wu Ming

Department of Platform Software Infrastructure,
Software and Services Group, Intel Corporation,
No. 880 Zixing Road, Zizhu Science Park,
Minhang Dist., Shanghai, 200241, China
Fax: 8621-34290697
E-mail: ming.m.wu@intel.com
E-mail: wuming@tsinghua.org.cn
Abstract: Transparent computing (TC) can be thought as a special kind of
cloud computing that regards storage as a service. TC logically splits the
software stack from the underlying hardware platform, and separates the
computing unit from storage for the purpose of making the same software run
on different hardware and different software run on the same hardware. TC
requires a unified software-hardware interface to abstract the underlying
platform details. As the new generation BIOS interface, Unified Extensible
Firmware Interface (UEFI) defines the interface between the software stack and
hardware platform, which aligns TC well. UEFI’s modular design also allows
for BIOS customisation. An ideal vision of TC implementation with UEFI is
proposed in this paper as the forecast. Several models are also provided to
illustrate the constraints of current hardware and software stack in terms of
performance, portability, and hardware adaptability. Finally, a case study of a
wireless TC tablet is provided together with the analysis.

Acknowledgements

This paper is completed based on Prof. Zhang Yaoxue’s innovative TC concept one
decade ago. He forecasted a new computing paradigm even before the invention of the
popular cloud computing. Also, this paper is based on years of work by my team at Intel,
lots of my colleagues has contributed like Zhou Hua, Huang Fujin, Xing Yuanyuan, and
Wang Yan. Also as my peer at Tsinghua University, Prof. Zhou Yuezhi carefully
reviewed the paper and gave me many valuable feedbacks, and many thanks to the
anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.