The world is increasingly connected through not only smart phones and email, but new and hungry gadgets, such as webcams, sensors, and monitors, which demand an ever-larger slice of the bandwidth pie.
Ali R. Butt, professor in the Department of Computer Science in Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, was recently awarded a $516,000 grant to examine how to keep those gadgets from depleting the cloud computing bandwidth that the internet currently depends on.
“We are now just beginning to experience living super-interconnected lives,” said Butt. “Imagine five or 10 years from now when we will live in smart houses that use all kinds of sensors to monitor your safety, adjust the cooling or heating, and many other little devices and things that are only beginning to be used. These things require valuable computing abilities and information on the cloud to work properly and be useful.”
Butt, who also holds a courtesy appointment in electrical and computer engineering, is the principal investigator on the collaborative research project. He is partnering with Muhammad Shahzad, assistant professor of computer science from North Carolina State University, to design new techniques for massive data management and processing in the cloud, as well as study the actual nodes computers use to transfer information. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation.
