UpperWare: Bringing resources back to the system

If we expect the computer to vanish in the background, to make pervasive computing a reality, first we must be able to provide the illusion that all the user´s computers, devices, and applications are part of a greater, virtual, computer. In order to build such a virtual computer, resources must be provided with a portable programmatic interface to interact with programs running on top of current mainstream operating systems. These interfaces should be understandable by the final user, in order to allow for their manual operation. Also, a system layer is needed to tie resources together, control them, and handle changes of context to permit adaptation. In this paper, we present an architecture that permits this: the UpperWare. This architecture permits to abstract and export the computing resources offering an universal interface by using a synthetic file system scheme.