Advanced Khoros: the infrastructure of broad technology development

Khoros is an integrated software environment that couples strong scientific data visualization and processing with software development tools and APIs to allow easy user extensibility. This unique combination of capabilities defines a new methodology for developing mission critical software. Khoral Research Incorporated (KRI) is funded via a variety of contracts with ARPA, Wright Labs, and NRaD to fundamentally redesign the infrastructure of Khoros so that it will support the computing requirements of the government research community into the next century. This effort involves re-engineering Khoros to use technologies such as MPI, CORBA, and Internet protocols. Adopting these standards will allow Advanced Khoros to provide support for fine-grain parallelism, distributed computing, distributed objects, and a stronger technology for collaboration. Support for these technologies will create an enhanced common infrastructure that allows ready collaboration between agencies and programs, reduces duplication of effort, and decreases software and system development costs. Technology transfer from research to applications will speed up significantly and system components will be reusable. The objective of the Advanced Khoros effort is an integrated environment that supports the systems developer through the life cycle of a software system. This means that, from design and prototype, through development, to deployment to heterogeneous networks and embedded systems, a software system will smoothly produce the tools and results required. Khoros has developed over a nine-year period and is available as Free Access Software. This ready availability has created a community of users who encourage collaboration and demand speedy institution of new tools and features. Advanced Khoros marks a separation of KRI development into two tracks. The Khoros Free Access Software (FAS) track will continue the development of a commercial-quality, stable product. The Advanced Khoros track, while remaining freely available, will focus on Research and Development goals, including the rapid inclusion of new features and methodology. A standard platform for government research and development programs, both versions of Khoros are expected to serve a broad spectrum of users working in military and commercial technology into the next century. This paper is an overview of Advanced Khoros development