Professor Vladimir Getov’s work on optimising the use of the Java programming language has ushered in a new world of possibility and creativity for global industries and end users.
Java has a motto – ‘Write once, run everywhere’. Created in 1995, this high-level programming language was designed, not just for computers, but in anticipation of devices that did not exist yet – smart phones, tablets, smart watches, to name a few! Java’s versatility has always made it attractive to creative invention. Over 85% of mobile apps are written with Java. Java is also widely used in 3D and 2D games, as well as desktop and web applications, intranets, big data processing and cloud technology.
Originally, Java did have a limitation, however – its lack of symmetric message passing. This capability is vitally important for parallel and distributed memory computing and its absence substantially reduced Java’s potential.
Professor Vladimir Getov and his team at Westminster’s Distributed and Intelligent Systems Research Group identified and rectified this weakness with the development of Message Passing for Java (MPJ). From here, Getov formed and chaired the International MPJ Working Group which would go on to create four new international standards, approved by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute).
This specification formed the foundations for the Java binding in Open MPI (message passing interface) – the most popular worldwide open-source library. This is because, the developers say, Getov’s standardised classes of Java “provide a platform-independent way to access host-specific features such as threads, graphics, file management, and networking”. Through its inclusion on Open MPI, MPJ has been able to reach a wide range of users, 80% of which belong to non-profit organisations, including government institutes, as well as software and hardware vendors.
Creative uses enabled by Message Passing for Java
Getov and his team’s Java innovation has quite literally changed the world. The Grid, Cloud and Extreme-scale computing products it has helped create, represent a fundamental shift in IT service delivery that has permanently changed computing.
Dr Peter Buhler, Head of Computer Science at IBM’s Zurich Laboratory agrees. Technical innovations Getov “has invented and co-invented are the basis for many Web-scale applications we have at our fingertips today”, he says.
The IBM Watson supercomputer would not exist without the framework Getov created, having been “designed by reusing the principles developed and standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute as part of Vladimir Getov’s work”. This unique artificial intelligence system has been used creatively to produce a range of impactful applications.
IBM Watson helped anticipate 2015’s Hurricane Patricia – one of the strongest storms ever recorded – using AI-based weather prediction models. It then gave advanced warning to an IBM production center in Guadalajara, enabling officials to evacuate the site, saving countless lives.
IBM Watson has also transformed social services by empowering at-risk individuals to manage their own support and well-being. For example, Aspiranet, which currently serves 22,000 young people and families across California have used it to aid the transition from foster home care to independent living: “Cognitive technology helps free up caseworkers’ time, enabling them to focus on what matters most, human connection.”
Through the 2014 Green Horizons initiative, IBM has helped the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau reduce air pollution which causes more than one million premature deaths in China each year. Green Horizons uses the Watson enabled “advanced machine learning” to identify at-risk sections of the city.
Watch the IBM Research video on the Green Horizons project on YouTube.
By July 2020, the Watson supercomputer had been used by nearly 2,800 companies, reflecting, once again, its effectiveness across a variety of application domains. Nearly half of IBM Watson users are large companies ($1000m turnover), 37% are small (under $50m), and 16% are medium-sized. They also cut across a variety of sectors and industries – the largest being computer software (22%), followed by hospital and health care (14%), higher education (8%), and IT and services (7%).
Find out more about the social impacts enabled by IBM Watson at the IBM website.
Helping businesses thrive
IBM Watson’s 16.1% global market share places it amongst the three dominant systems in the Machine Learning category. Further, Buhler confirms that the Biometric Identification System application, developed in collaboration with Vladimir’s DIS RG team and delivered by IBM Research – Zurich Laboratory, has had a “significant economic impact” through its producing “quicker return on investment” enabled by “the much higher productivity and shorter development cycle provided by the invented component-based methodology and development process”. This application contributes to the leading Global Technology Services segment of IBM’s business, which made up over a third of its total revenue in 2019.
Since Getov’s team worked with ActiveEon from 2006-9, CEO Professor Denis Caromel says the company “has been directly exploiting the results of the project, including the GCM and MPJ framework”. This has been especially true for their workflows and scheduling open-source middleware, used in delivering solutions for a range of commercial customers across a variety of sectors, including mining, satellite technology and visa processing. Since August 2013, ActiveEon has achieved revenue growth of 18m USD, starting with less than $1m in 2013 and reaching revenue of $19m in 2020. Its employees increased from 30 employees at the end of 2013 to 106 employees in 2020.
Those successful results would not have been possible without Professor Getov’s direct contribution. His work has reduced substantially the return of investment cycle of complex distributed applications.
– ActiveEON CEO Professor Denis Caromel
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