A highly tolerant distributed network! Like a Starfish: No central brain, cut it in half, it stays alive! Rethinking distributed computing. Welcome to the Starfish-Network
Creating a "virtualized computer" that can run on hundreds of nodes, with the nodes constantly going in and out. This virtualized computer has highly tolerant storage, can execute processes, and has I/O. This also will be completely decentralized, as opposed to a common technique of having a "master" server. All nodes are "treated the same"
Imagine a table with one hundred table legs. Now, imagine those table legs randomly appearing and disappearing. Will the table stay standing? This network seeks to make this possible, make a sturdy execution/storage environment highly tolerant of individual nodes coming and leaving.
This is currently a research project for Benjamin Carter's undergraduate capstone under the direction of Professor Dr. Isac Artzi and with a research advisor of Professor David Demland at Grand Canyon University.
Watch a video of a OS visual that demonstrates node communication in real time here.
See a demo of StarfishOS in action (no sound)
This project was presented in front of Grand Canyon University Administration, including the Provost and President of the University, in the GCU Undergraduate Research Symposium. See the news article.
A simple lay-man definition of a computer is this: A machine that:
- Can execute stuff (Execution Environment)
- Can store stuff (Persistent Storage)
- Has input and output. (IO)
So, the Starfish Network seeks to recreate the above, to "simulate a computer".
- A Distributed CPU-like platform
- A Distributed Persistent Storage (Virtual Disk/File System)
- A Distributed Approach to IO
It seeks to combine those into one unified system. A completely distributed OS.
This repository is a proof of concept of the Starfish OS and architecture. A node can be run as a Docker container by building the provided Dockerfile.
See the /docs/general.md for more information. Or, take a look at the overview blog article