Distributed Dataflow Across the Edge-Cloud Continuum
Tyler Ekaireb, Lukas Brand, Nagarjun Avaraddy, Markus U. Mock, Chandra Krintz, Rich Wolski · 2024
Internet of Things (IoT) applications span the edge-cloud continuum to form multiscale distributed systems. The heterogeneity that defines this architecture, coupled with the asynchronous, event-triggered and failure-prone nature of these deployments create significant programming and maintenance challenges for developers of IoT applications. To address this impediment to innovation, we present Lam-1nar’a dataflow programming model for IoT applications implemented using a novel log-based and concurrent runtime system that spans all resource scales. We describe the properties that underpin Laminar'sdesign and compare it to a lower-level event-based approach. We show that Laminar'sdataflow model hides many of the complexities of “lock-free” event-driven programming. Through an empirical evaluation of Laminar,we find its design and implementation are both more straightforward for developers and more performant.