7Harnessing the Computing Continuum for Programming Our World
Pete Beckman1, Jack Dongarra2, 4, Nicola Ferrier1, Geoffrey3, Terry Moore2, Dan Reed5, and Micah Beck2
1Argonne National Laboratory, Lamont, IL, USA
2University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA
3Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, UA
4Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oakridge, TN, USA
4University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
7.1 Introduction and Overview
The number of network-connected devices (sensors, actuators, instruments, computers, and data stores) now substantially exceeds the number of humans on this planet. This is a tipping point, and the societal and intellectual effects of this are not yet fully understood. Billions of things that sense, think, and act are now connected to a planet-spanning network of cloud and high-performance computing (HPC) centers that contain more computers than the entire Internet did just a few years ago. We are now critically dependent on this expanding network for our communications and social discourse; our food, health, and safety; our manufacturing, transportation, and logistics; and our creative and intellectual endeavors, including research and technical innovation. Despite our increasing dependence on this massive, interconnected system of systems in nearly every aspect of our social, political, economic, and cultural lives, we lack ways to analyze its emergent properties, specify its operating constraints, or coordinate its behavior.
Simply put, today we have the tools ...
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