iEx.ec: Blockchain-based decentralized Cloud computing platform.

date and location : Tuesday 7th February 2017 : Amphi L @ 2PM

iEx.ec aims at providing distributed applications running on the blockchain a scalable, secure and easy access to the services, the data-sets and the computing resources they need. This technology relies on the Ethereum smart contracts and allows building a virtual Cloud infrastructure that provides high-performance computing services on demand.

iExec leverages a set of research technologies that have been developed at INRIA and CNRS in the field of Desktop Grid computing (aka Volunteer Computing). The principle is to collect the computer resources underutilized on the Internet to execute very large parallel applications at the fraction of the cost of a traditional supercomputer.iExec bridges Blockchain and XtremWeb-HEP, a mature, solid, and open-source Desktop Grid software which implements all the needed features : fault-tolerance, multi-applications, multi-users, hybrid public/private infrastructure, deployment of virtual images, data management, security and accountability, interoperability with eScience infrastructure, and many more.

In this talk, we’ll show how Ethereum can be used to organize decentralised infrastructures and market places, where everyone will be able to rent its computing resources (CPU, storage, GPU, …), where the innovative SMEs which design Big Data and HPC applications will be able to sell them online immediately with the needed resources to run them, and where highly valued data-sets will be rentable with a fine-grain business model.

We’ll present some early results that illustrate the interaction between the Ethereum blockchain and regular distributed systems (e.g task scheduler, data management, etc..)

Moreover, because the blockchain provides distributed consensus and resiliency while being fully distributed, we think that it’s going to change drastically the way we design distributed systems and applications. We’ll draw some perspectives on blockchain-based infrastructure management, and present the related research directions.