Bare machine computing

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Bare Machine Computing (BMC) is a computer architecture based on bare machines. In the BMC paradigm, applications run without the support of any operating system (OS) or centralized kernel i.e., no intermediary software is loaded on the bare machine prior to running applications. The applications, which are called bare machine applications or simply BMC applications, do not use any persistent storage or a hard disk, and instead are stored on detachable mass storage such as a USB flash drive. A BMC program consists of a single application or a small set of applications (application suite) that runs as a single executable within one address space. BMC applications have direct access to the necessary hardware resources. They are self-contained, self-managed and self-controlled entities that boot, load and run without using any other software components or external software. BMC applications have inherent security due to their design. There are no OS-related vulnerabilities, and each application only contains the necessary (minimal) functionality. There is no privileged mode in a BMC system since applications only run in user mode. Also, application code is statically compiled-there is no means to dynamically alter BMC program flow during execution.

## History

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In the early days of computing, computer applications directly communicated to the hardware and there was no operating system. As applications grew larger encompassing various domains, OSes were invented. They served as middleware providing hardware abstractions to applications. OSes have grown immensely in their size and complexity resulting in attempts to reduce OS overhead and improve performance including Microkernel, Exokernel, Tiny-OS, OS-Kit,[1] Palacios and Kitten,[2] IO_Lite,[3] bare-metal Linux, IBM-Libra and other lean kernels. In addition to the above approaches, in embedded systems such as smart phones, a small and dedicated portion of an OS and a given set of applications are closely integrated with the hardware. There are also a myriad of industrial control and gaming applications that run directly on the hardware. In most of these systems, the hardware is not open to run general purpose applications.

Bare machine computing originated with the application object (AO) concept invented by Karne at Towson University.[4] It evolved over the years into dispersed operating systems (DOSC),[5] and eventually into the BMC paradigm.

## Compared to conventional computing

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In many ways, the BMC paradigm differs from conventional computing. There is no centralized kernel or OS running during the execution of BMC applications. Also, a bare machine in the BMC paradigm does not have any ownership or store valuable resources; and it can be used to run general purpose computing applications. Such characteristics are not found in conventional computing systems including embedded systems and system on a chip (SOC). In addition, the BMC concept is a minimalistic approach to achieve simplicity, smaller code sizes and security.[6]

In bare machine computing a computing device is bare and its programs directly communicate to hardware. Application and systems programs are one and the same. No user mode or kernel mode in this system. When a given application suite is running, no other things are running in the box. The entire programs are written in a single programming language C/C++ with very little assembly code. Application programmer controls the entire hardware resources. It is based on events thus avoiding centralized kernel. A given BMC application suite simply runs on a given instruction set architecture (ISA) for ever, as along the ISA remains upward compatible. This approach is friendly to green computing as there is no need to dump hardware and software caused by today's planned obsolescence, in every aspect of our information systems.

## Applications and research

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The BMC paradigm has been used to implement webservers,[7] split servers,[8][9] VoIP,[10] SIP server,[11] email,[12] webmail,[13] Text Based Browser,[14] security protocols,[15][16] file systems,[17][18][19] RAID,[20] transformed bare SQLite.,[21][22] middleware for network cards interfaces (NICS),[23] and Ethernet bonding on BMC webserver with dual NICs,[24] Success in transforming conventional Windows or Linux applications to run as BMC applications was expected to pave the way for new uses of the BMC paradigm.[25]

## References

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1. ^ "The OS Kit Project". Salt Lake, Utah: School of Computing, University of Utah. June 2002.
2. ^ J. Lange et al, “Palacios and Kitten: New high performance operating systems for scalable virtualized and native supercomputing,” 24th IEEEInternational Paral-lel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), 2010, pp. 1-12
3. ^ Pai, V. S.; Druschel, P.; Zwaenepoel, W. (February 2000). "IO-Lite: A Unified I/O Buffering and Caching System" (PDF). ACM Transactions on Computer Systems. 18 (1): 37–66\. doi:10.1145/332799.332895. S2CID 5280787.
4. ^ Karne, R. K. (December 1995). "Object-Oriented Computer Architectures for New Generation of Applications, Computer Architecture News". 23 (5): 8–19\. doi:10.1145/218328.218332. S2CID 880971. `{{cite journal}}`: Cite journal requires `|journal=` (help)
5. ^ Karne, R.K, Venkatasamy, K (Karthick Jaganathan), Ahmed, T. Dispersed Operating System Computing (DOSC), Onward Track, OOPSLA 2005, San Diego, CA, October 2005.
6. ^ Soumya, S.; Guerin, R.; Hosanagar, K. (September 2011). "Functionality-Rich vs. Minimalist Platforms: A Two-Sided Market Analysis". ACM Computer Communication Review. 41 (5): 36–43\. doi:10.1145/2043165.2043171. S2CID 890141.
7. ^ He, L., Karne, R. K., Wijesinha, A.L., and Emdadi, A. Design and Performance of a Bare PC Web Server, International Journal of Computers and Their Applications (IJCA), June 2008.
8. ^ B. Rawal, R. K. Karne, and A. L. Wijesinha. Splitting HTTP Requests on Two Servers, The Third International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks: COMSNETS 2011, January 2011, Bangalore, India.
9. ^ B. Rawal, R. K. Karne, and A. L. Wijesinha. “Mini Web server clusters for HTTP request splitting,” IEEE International Conference on High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC), pp. 94-100.
10. ^ G. H. Khaksari, A. L. Wijesinha, R. K. Karne, L. He, and S. Girumala, “”A peer-to-peer bare PC VoIP application,” 4th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC), 2007, pp. 803-807.
11. ^ A. Alexander, R. Yasinovskyy, A. Wijesinha, and R. Karne, "SIP Server Implementation and Performance on a Bare PC," International Journal in Advances on Telecommunications, vol. 4, no. 1 and 2, 2011.
12. ^ Ford,G.H., Karne, R.K., Wijesinha, A.L., and Appiah-Kubi, P. The Design and Implementation of a Bare PC Email Server,33rd Annual IEEE International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC 2009), Seattle, Washington, July 2009, p480-485.
13. ^ P. Appiah-kubi, R. K. Karne, and A. L. Wijesinha. The Design and Performance of a Bare PC Webmail Server, The 12th IEEE International Conference on High-Performance Computing and Communications, AHPCC 2010, Sept 1-3, 2010, Melbourne, Australia, p521-526.
14. ^ S.Almautairi, R. K. Karne and A.L. Wijesinha, A Bare PC Text Based Browser, 2019 Workshop On Computing, Networking and Communications (CNC), Honolulu, Hawaii, February 2019
15. ^ N. Kazemi, A. L. Wijesinha, and R. Karne. Design and Implementation of IPsec on a Bare PC, 2nd International Conference on Computer Science and its Applications (CSA), 2009.
16. ^ A. Emdadi, R. K. Karne, and A. L. Wijesinha. Implementing the TLS Protocol on a Bare PC, ICCRD2010, The 2nd International Conference on Computer Research and Development, Kaula Lumpur, Malaysia, May 2010.
17. ^ W. V. Thompson, H. Alabsi, R. K. Karne, S. Linag, A.L. Wijesinha, R. Almajed, and H. Chang, A Mass Storage System for Bare PC Applications Using USBs, International Journal on Advances in Internet Technology, vol 9, no 3 and 4, year 2016. p63-74.
18. ^ W. Thompson, R. Karne, A. Wijesinha, H. Alabsi, and H. Chang, Implementing a USB File System for Bare PC Applications, ICIW 2016: The Eleventh International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services, p58-63.
19. ^ S.Liang, R. K. Karne, and A.L.Wijesinha., A Lean USB File System For Bare Machine Applications, The Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering, ISCA, June 2012, pp.191-196.
20. ^ H. Z. Alabsi, W. V. Thompson, R. K. Karne, A. L. Wijesinha, R. Almajed, F. Almansour, A Bare Machine RAID File System for USBs, SEDE 2017: 26th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering, pp 113-118.
21. ^ W. Thompson, R. K. Karne and A.L. Wijesinha, Interoperable SQLite for a Bare PC, 13th International Conference Beyond Database Architectures and Structures (BDAS'17), 2017, p177-188.
22. ^ U. Okafor, R. K. Karne, A. L. Wijesinha and B. Rawal Transforming SQLITE to Run on a Bare PC, In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Software Paradigm Trends, pages 311-314, Rome, Italy, July 2012.
23. ^ F. Almansour, R. K. Karne, A.L. Wijesinha, H. Alabsi and R. Almajed, Middleware for NICs in Bare PC Applications, 26th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (Poster Paper), ICCCN2017, Vancouver, Canada, 2017.
24. ^ F.Almansour, R K. Karne, A. L. Wijesinha, B. S. Rawal “Ethernet Bonding on a Bare PC Web Server with Dual NICs”, The 33rd ACM Symposium On Applied Computing SAC 2018, April 2018, Pau, France.
25. ^ Peter, A.; Karne, R.; Wijesinha, A.; Appiah-Kubi, P. (April 4–7, 2013). Transforming a Bare PC Application to Run on an ARM Device. IEEE SoutheastCon. Jacksonville, Florida.