Parallel Processing on Networks of Workstations: A Fault-Tolerant, High Performance Approach

One of the most sought after software innovation of this decade is the construction of systems using off-the-shelf workstations that actually deliver, and even surpass, the power and reliability of supercomputers. Many researchers are using conventional techniques such as RPC, DSM, replication, causal communications and other techniques to provide parallel computing facilities on workstation networks. However, the overhead, reliability and management problems in these approaches have proven to be daunting. Using completely novel techniques: eager scheduling, evasive memory layouts and dispersed data management, it is possible to build a execution environment for parallel programs on workstation networks. These techniques were originally developed in a theoretical framework for an abstract machine which models a shared memory asynchronous multiprocessor. The network of workstations platform presents an inherently asynchronous environment for the execution of our parallel program. This g..