CONCURRENCY: PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE, VOL. 10(3), 199–228 (MARCH 1998)

Distributed concurrent computing based on lightweight processes can potentially address performance and functionality limits in heterogeneous systems. The TPVM framework, based on the notion of ‘exportable services’, is an extension to the PVM message-passing system, but uses threads as units of computing, scheduling, and parallelism. TPVM facilitates and supports three different distributed concurrent programming paradigms: (a) the traditional, task based, explicit message-passing model; (b) a data-driven instantiation model that enables straightforward specification of computation based on data dependencies; and (c) a partial shared-address space model via remote memory access, with naming and typing of distributed data areas. The latter models offer significantly different computing paradigms for network-based computing, while maintaining a close resemblance to, and building upon, the conventional PVM infrastructure in the interest of compatibility and ease of transition. The TPVM system comprises three basic modules: a library interface that provides access to thread-based distributed concurrent computing facilities, a portable thread interface module which abstracts the required thread-related services, and a thread server module which performs scheduling and system data management. System implementation as well as applications experiences have been very encouraging, indicating the viability of the proposed models, the feasibility of portable and efficient threads systems for distributed computing, and the performance improvements that result from multithreaded concurrent computing. ©1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Concurrency: Pract. Exper.,Vol.10(3), 199–228 (1998) 1