Self-aware computing: Introduction and motivation

Designing and operating computing and communication systems are becoming increasingly challenging tasks, due to a multitude of reasons. First, compute nodes are evolving towards parallel and heterogeneous architectures to realise performance gains while minimising their power consumption. Progress in micro(nano)- electronics allows us to integrate more and more functionality on a single compute node, but at the same time requires us to deal with increasing numbers of faulty and unreliable components. Second, distributed systems are growing in the numbers and heterogeneity of nodes and must be able to cope with an increasing level of dynamics. The network topology and the collective resources of a distributed system can vary strongly during runtime since nodes may leave and enter the network dynamically. The position, functionality and available resources of each node may also change dynamically.