The Center for Autonomic Computing at Rutgers

About CAC The Center for Autonomic Computing (CAC), an NSF Research Center funded by the I/UCRC program, combines resources from universities, private companies, and the federal government to conduct fundamental research on making all kinds of computer systems and applications - from humble desktop computers to air traffic control systems - more reliable, more secure, and more efficient.

Green Computing Workshop - May 4, 2009 As part of the Green Computing Initiative, CCC will host an investigative workshop aimed at identifying opportunities and for cross-disciplinary research synergies and collaborations at Rutgers. For information, please visit the registration page. Spring 2009 CAC Meeting The Spring 2009 CAC meeting will be held at Rutgers University on April 14 & 16. Info and registration is available here. The Fall 2008 CAC meeting was held at the Biosphere 2, hosted by the University of Arizona site, on November 5-6 2008. New: The Rutgers Green Computing Initiative This research initiative will explore conceptual and technological research opportunities necessary to realize green computing and fundamentally address the challenges such as energy conservation, resources efficiency, and autonomic management and control through technologies such as virtualization, autonomic/self management, thermal and power awareness. See http://nsfcac.rutgers.edu/greencomputing/ for futher information. CAC Announcement from NSF Read the full NSF announcement of the CAC project here. Read more of what's new...

Technical Scope

Autonomic computing (AC) denotes a broad area of scientific and engineering research on methods, architectures and technologies for the design, implementation, integration and evaluation of special and general-purpose computing systems, components and applications that are capable of autonomously achieving desired behaviors. AC systems aim to be self-managed in order to enable independent operation, minimize cost and risk, accommodate complexity and uncertainty or enable systems of systems with large numbers of components. Hence, system integration and automation of management are important areas of research whose contexts subsume other AC research topics. These might include, to varying degrees, self-organization, self-healing, self-optimization (e.g. for power or speed), self-protection and other so-called self-* behaviors. CAC research activities will advance several disciplines that impact the specification, design, engineering and integration of autonomic computing and information processing systems. They include design and evaluation methods, algorithms, architectures, information processing, software, mathematical foundations and benchmarks for autonomic systems. Solutions will be studied at different levels of both centralized and distributed systems, including the hardware, networks, storage, middleware, services and information layers. Collectively, the participating universities have research and education programs whose strengths cover the technical areas of the center. Within this broad scope, the specific research activities will vary over time as a reflection of center member needs and the evolution of the field of autonomic computing.

Benefits of Membership

CAC members are afforded access to leading-edge developments in autonomic computing and to knowledge accumulated by academic researchers and other industry partners. New members will join a growing list of founding members that currently includes BAE Systems, EWA Governemnt Systems, IBM, Intel, Merrill-Lynch, Microsoft, Motorola, Northrop-Grumman, NEC, Raytheon, Xerox, Avirtech, Citrix, Imaginestics, and ISCA Technologies. Benefits of membership include:

• Collaboration with faculty, graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and other center partners
• Choice of project topics to be funded by members' own contributions
• Formal periodic project reviews along with continuous informal interaction and timely access to reports, papers and intellectual property generated by the center
• Access to unique world-class equipment, facilities, and other CAC infrastructure
• Recruitment opportunities among excellent graduate students
• Leveraging of investments, projects and activities by all CAC members
• Spin-off initiatives leading to new partnerships, customers or teaming for competitive proposals to funded programs

Funding

Per NSF guidelines, industry and government contributions in the form of annual CAC memberships ($35K/year per regular membership), coupled with baseline funds from NSF and university matching funds, directly support the Center's expenses for personnel, equipment, travel, and supplies. Memberships provide funds to support the Center's graduate students on a one-to-one basis, and thus the size of the annual membership fee is directly proportional to the cost of supporting one graduate student, while NSF and university funds support various other costs of operation. Multiple annual memberships may be contributed by any organization wishing to support multiple students and/or projects. The initial operating budget for CAC is projected to be approximately $1.5M/year, including NSF and universities contributions, in an academic environment that is very cost effective. Thus, a single regular membership is an exceptional value. It represents less than 3% of the projected annual budget of the Center yet reaps the full benefit of Center activities, a research program that could be significantly more expensive in an industry or government facility.

Personnel