Transient customization of mobile computing infrastructure

Abstract: "Kimberley enables rapid software provisioning of fixed infrastructure for transient use by a mobile device. It uses virtual machine (VM) technology, but avoids the performance challenges of running VMs on resource-poor mobile devices. VM execution only occurs in the infrastructure and never on the mobile device; however, the device may transport and interpret parts of VM state. Kimberley decomposes VM state into a widely-available base VM and a much smaller private VM overlay. The base is downloaded in advance; the overlay is delivered on demand from the mobile device or under its control from a public web site. We have built a prototype of Kimberley, and our experiments confirm the feasibility of this approach."