SYMPHONY- A MASSIVELY PARALLEL NETWORK COMPUTER

Abstract. Symphony is a virtual parallel network computer. Remote computers participating in the Symphony processing are coupled together simply by setting a local java-enabled web browser, or a local Java Virtual Machine (JVM), to one specific Uniform Reference Locator (URL). The range of computation tasks, which can be processed by Symphony includes Monte-Carlos, image rendering, simulation of stochastic processes and all sort of problem requiring no inter-process communication. A simple job scheduler, an algorithm for the efficient storage of results and online control facilities have been implemented. 1. Purpose of Symphony There is a well-known problem in every site nowadays: the wasted cpu time of idling computers. Many approaches exist to solve this problem using more or less sophisticated strategies to join together the computing power. Most systems require the installation of complex software, some other even require modifications at operating system level. We follow a straightforward and practical approach1 to build a massively parallel network com-puter: no further software has to be installed on the remote systems, a Java-enabled browser is sufficient to couple the local computing power to the Symphony system. Due to the platfor