The Proximal Workspace architecture: A latency-focused approach to supporting context-aware applications

We are developing a new enhanced cloud-based computing architecture, called the Proximal Workspace architecture to allow access and interaction between lightweight devices, and applications that represent a new generation of computation-and-data-intensive programs. We are developing a new system architecture based on supporting workspaces which provide nearby computing power to the users devices and thus mediate between them and the clouds computing resources. Specifically, a workspace provides a set of middleware utilities designed to exploit local resources, and provide specific functions such as rendering of graphics, pre-fetching of data, and combining data from different servers. More generally, the workspace is designed to run any subset of activities that cannot be run on a user´s device due to computation speed or storage size, and cannot be run on a cloud server due to network latency.