Chimera is a software library created as a research project at UCSB for the C programming language that implements a structured, peer-to-peer routing platform to allow the easy development of peer-to-peer applications.
The project's focus is on providing a fast, lightweight implementation of a system like other prefix-routing protocols such as UCSB's Tapestry system and Microsoft Research's Pastry system, that can be easily used to build an application that creates an overlay network with a limited number of library calls.
The library is intended to serve as both a usable complete structured peer-to-peer system and a starting point for further research.
It includes some of the current work in locality optimization and soft-state operations.
Chimera is currently being used in industry labs, as part of research done by the U.S. Department of Defense, and by startup companies.