There is an increasing demand for storage capacity and storage throughput, driven largely by new data types such as video data and satelite images as well as by the growing use of the Internet and the web that generate and transmit rapidly evolving datasets. Thus, there is a need for storage architectures that scale the processing power with the growing size of the datasets.

The SmAS project attempts to deal with this need by introducing a system, based on the technology of active disks, that employs network attached disks with processing capabilities. The SmAS system provides the user with the facility of executing code directly at the disk, thus allowing for filtering the data before their transmission to the client. The code is written in a C-like language that enforces code security and bounds the code's memory requirments. The SmAS system requires a minimal operating system at the disk to provide basic support for process scheduling and memory management that results in a lightweight system suitable for data-intensive applications and the processing power of active disks.

For a more detailed description of the system concepts see the Overview section. Various implementation issues are described in the Implementation section. You can also find information about the current project status in the Project Status section.

The research for the SmAS project is conducted by a small group of people (see People ) in the computer science department at the University Of Ioannina. The project is partly supported by the Hellenic General Secreteriat of Research and Technology through grant PENED-99/495.