Handling IoT platform heterogeneity with COISA, a compact OpenISA virtual platform

摘要

In face of the high number of different hardware platforms we need to program with Internet-of-Thingsrn(IoT), virtual machines (VMs) pose as a promising technology to allow a program once, deploy everywherernstrategy. Unfortunately, existing VMs are either too heavy or use a stripped-down version to work onrnresource-constrained IoT devices. We present COISA, a compact virtual platform that relies on OpenISA,rnan instruction set architecture (ISA) that strives for easy emulation, to allow a single program to be deployedrnon many platforms, including tiny microcontrollers. By exploring the benefits of using a concrete ISA asrnour VM language, our experimental results indicate that COISA is easily portable and is capable of runningrnunmodified guest applications in highly heterogeneous host platforms, including one with only 2 kBrnof RAM. For time-critical IoT applications on constrained platforms where extracting performance is ofrnparamount importance, we propose the use of cloud-assisted translations, which employ static binary translationrnto deliver a binary fully converted to the native ISA used in the IoT device.