A new publication on WebAssembly and TrustZone-A technologies has been accepted in the 2nd Workshop on Flexible Resource and Application Management on the Edge (FRAME’22) and is now available through ACM Digital Library.
FRAME’22 is collocated with the ACM 31st International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC’22) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, from June 27 to July 1, 2022.
Abstract: Over the last decade, the cloud computing landscape has transformed from centralised architecture made of large data centres to a distributed and heterogeneous architecture embracing edge and IoT processing units. This shift has created the so-called cloud-edge continuum, which closes the gap between the large datacentres and the end-user devices. Existing solutions are, however, dominated by proprietary silos and incompatible technologies, built around dedicated devices and run-time stacks. In this position paper, we motivate the need for interoperable solutions that would run seamlessly across hardware devices and software environments, while achieving good performance and a high level of security — a critical requirement for code and data processed off-premises. We argue that the technology provided by WebAssembly running on modern virtual machines and shielded within trusted execution environments, combined with a core set of services and support libraries, allows us to meet both goals. We also present preliminary results from a prototype built with these technologies and deployed on the cloud-edge continuum.
The publication is part of an initiative that promotes the secure execution of common software on heterogeneous architectures, a scenario faced by VEDLIoT while implementing solutions going from cloud to IoT devices.
