CAREER: Harnessing Implementation Flexibility to Enable Runtime Adaptation
Summary
For today’s apps, achieving good performance on billions of smartphones around the world requires adaptation. Apps must adapt to a wide variety of device capabilities; a constantly changing network environment; limited energy resources; fluctuating availability and accuracy of sensor information; different patterns of interaction; and a diverse community of users. These environmental differences can cause a successful approach on one device or user to fail for another device or user. For example, different implementations of the same algorithm can produce different energy-performance tradeoffs due to variations in hardware capabilities or user inputs, or different caching strategies can outperform each other due to variations in network performance or user mobility. And as increasing variation makes adaptation more important, it also makes it more difficult. Today, manually designing effective adaptation policies that anticipate all potential sources of variation challenges even talented developers. And no approaches exist to simplify the process of creating adaptive and effective apps.
This proposal investigates a novel approach to building adaptive mobile systems by exposing and harnessing implementation flexibility. Implementation flexibility refers to cases when multiple correct ways to accomplish something exist: such as multiple algorithm implementations, different intervals for repeating an operation, or different times at which a task can be performed. Currently, developers must both develop these adaptation mechanisms and formulate adaptation policies. In contrast, exposing implementation flexibility allows developers to write adaptable apps without providing adaptation policies. Instead, pre- and post-deployment testing combined with machine learning and continued developer oversight develop automated adaptation policies that harness implementation flexibility to adapt to changing conditions. All developers have to do is expose flexibility. The proposed system finishes the job of creating and maintaining an adaptive and effective app.
Intellectual Merit
The project investigates a transformative new way of building adaptive apps and systems. Realizing this approach requires addressing multiple challenges. First, developers must be able to separate the inflexible portions of their code required for correctness from the flexible portions that can be adapted. Next, representative automated testing is required to rapidly and efficiently investigate how to harness uncertainty developers have exposed. Once testing is completed, flexibility must be harnessed by machine learning algorithms to build effective static and dynamic adaptation policies. The proposal also investigates how to mine different implementation approaches from single developers, small groups, and crowds, providing flexibility that can be harnessed for adaptation. A novel modern take on self-modifying code uses code annotations and modifications to express automated adaptation policies to developers. Finally, the project explores the implications of anticipated discoveries about adaptation on the design of next-generation language features that promote flexibility to a first-class construct.
Broader Impacts
The integrated educational plan also harnesses implementation flexibility but uses it to develop courses that adapt to differences between students. Beginning with the creation of a collaborative concept library of modules for teaching the basics of the internet, a new system will allow educators to express implementation flexibility in aspects of course implementation such as the ordering of concepts and the ordering of explanations for a single concept. The effectiveness of the adaptation will be assessed using student outcomes. By identifying the role of implementation flexibility in two very different settings, the project will establish a foundation for future efforts that harness flexibility to build other adaptive systems, while having an immediate impact on two important societal challenges: building mobile apps and teaching students online.
