Applying Advanced Concepts

In this short chapter, we collect a set of topics that may be significant in specific architecting situations but lie outside the main flow of material in the book. Most of these are relatively recent developments, and all of them are experiencing growing levels of interest and use in Systems Engineering and Architecture. We summarize Virtualization, which deals with a number of schemes for emulating or abstracting computing resources to create virtual versions that are more efficient and flexible than the actual hardware and software in a wide range of computing environments. We discuss a related topic, Clustering, which is a particular kind of hardware virtualization that integrates a set of resources, usually servers, to create a single platform. Next, we consider several varieties of Distributed Computing, which share the goal of coordinating and employing dispersed resources to create powerful and resilient computing capability. One version of this is a primary constituent of cloud computing, which is perhaps the most prominent current trend in information technology and which, itself, has multiple variants. We look briefly at agents and proxies and summarize several advanced algorithms, including artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms. Finally, we touch on several important aspects of the mechanical design of systems. Chapter Objective: the reader will acquire a basic understanding of important technologies that impact contemporary system architecture.