EPIQ - A Meta-Computing Framework for Scalable, Responsive and Reconfigurable End-to-End Resource Management, and Agile Objects: Middleware for Survivable Information Systems

The objective of the Quorum Program was to understand the basic principle and algorithms of middleware systems for Quality of Service-aware QoS-aware and survivable information systems. The EPIQ project aimed to develop a metacomputing framework for scalable, responsive, and reconfigurable end-to-end resource management. This meta-computing framework develops end-to-end QoS and resource management strategies that can be customized and integrated to provide guaranteed services of negotiated quality to time-critical C3I applications. Specifically, the framework provides end-to-end QoS and resource management to flexible applications and enables applications to adapt their quality if dynamic changes occur in requirements, demand on resources, and availability of resources. EPIQ multi-dimensional QoS and resource management mechanisms are application-independent, but permit integration with application-specific and user-oriented mechanisms, and give the user a crucial control in QoS, service and resource allocation adaptation, graceful degradation, and recovery. The QoS management and resource management framework is further expanded through off-line QoS programming and compilation environments to allow easy development of flexible multimedia applications within the framework. The framework validation is done through an open real-time, run-time environment that provides end-to-end, real-time performance computing and communication support for hard-real-time applications as well as end-to-end soft performance guarantees for soft real-time and flexible applications.