Hardware Abstraction Machine

Purpose

The Hardware Abstraction Machine provides a standardized interface for engines to interact with the underlying hardware components of the physical machine Anoma nodes are running. By decoupling engine software from specific hardware implementations, the Hardware Abstract Machine abstracts away complexities and facilitate cross-platform compatibility, enhancing software development and deployment.

Background

Historically, developers that wanted to write a program had to know how each underlying hardware device communicated with the rest of the system to ensure the software's compatibility. With a hardware abstraction layer developers can just talk to the operating system what the hardware device should do, which then generates hardware-specific instructions to the device. Anoma's Hardware Abstraction Machine thus provides an interface for accessing hardware-related resources such as CPU, memory, and storage.

Scope

For V1, we assume that the Hardware Abstraction Machine provides other engines access to local storage, compute, time management, and logging functionalities of the physical machine an Anoma node is running.

Overview

The current Hardware Abstraction Machine is composed of the following five engines.

Local Storage Engine

The Local Storage Engines provide efficient data storage and retrieval mechanisms directly on the physical machine of an Anoma node. These engines are specialized to meet distinct requirements of data storage and retrieval from other engines.

Local Compute Engine

The Local Compute Engine performs computational search tasks locally on the physical machine the Anoma node is running. It abstracts away the details of the underlying hardware and provides an interface for executing complex computational search tasks effectively.

Local Logging Engine

The Local Logging Engine provides capabilities for recording, monitoring, analyzing, and managing events and activities locally on the physical machine that the Anoma node is running. It supports diagnostic efforts, security monitoring, performance optimization, and historical analysis to ensure the stability, security, and efficiency.

Local Wall Clock Engine

The Local Wall Clock Engine provides a mechanism for tracking and managing time locally on the physical machine that the Anoma node is running. It abstracts away the details of the underlying hardware and provides an interface for getting real-time clock functionality.

Local Randomness Engine

The Local Randomness Engine generates random numbers or data locally on the physical machine that the Anoma node is running. Randomness is important for various computing tasks such as cryptography.

Communication Diagram

sequenceDiagram

%% --8<-- [start:sequence]
Any Local Engine ->>+ Any Hardware Abstraction Machine Engine: Operation Request
Any Hardware Abstraction Machine Engine -->>- Any Local Engine: Operation Response
Any Hardware Abstraction Machine Engine ->>+ Local Logging Engine: Append Log
%% --8<-- [end:sequence]

An engine communicates with the Hardware Abstraction Machine by sending a request to one of its engines to perform a specific operation. The Hardware Abstraction Machine engine executes the operation by interacting with the underlying hardware components and returns a response. It also logs relevant events and communicates them to the Local Logging Engine.