Robert Manchek

PVM: Parallel virtual machine: a users' guide and tutorial for networked parallel computing

Part 1 Introduction: heterogeneous network computing trends in distributed computing PVM overview other packages. Part 2 The PVM system. Part 3 Using PVM: how to obtain the PVM software setup to use PVM setup summary starting PVM common startup problems running PVM programs PVM console details host file options. Part 4 Basic programming techniques: common parallel programming paradigms workload allocation porting existing applications to PVM. Part 5 PVM user interface: process control information dynamic configuration signalling setting and getting options message passing dynamic process groups. Part 6 Program examples: fork-join dot product failure matrix multiply one-dimensional heat equation. Part 7 How PVM works: components messages PVM daemon libpvm library protocols message routing task environment console program resource limitations multiprocessor systems. Part 8 Advanced topics: XPVM porting PVM to new architectures. Part 9 Troubleshooting: geting PVM installed getting PVM running compiling applications running applications debugging and tracing debugging the system. Appendices: history of PVM versions PVM 3 routines.

The PVM concurrent computing system: evolution, experiences, and trends

Abstract The PVM system, a software framework for heterogeneous concurrent computing in networked environments, has evolved in the past several years into a viable technology for distributed and parallel processing in a variety of disciplines. PVM supports a straightforward but functionally complete message passing model, and is capable of harnessing the combined resources of typically heterogeneous networked computing platforms to deliver high levels of performance and functionality. In this paper, we describe the architecture of PVM system, and discuss its computing model, the programming interface it supports, auxiliary facilities for process groups and MPP support, and some of the internal implementation techniques employed. Performance issues, dealing primarily with communication overheads, are analyzed, and recent findings as well as experimental enhancements are presented. In order to demonstrate the viability of PVM for large scale scientific supercomputing, the paper includes representative case studies in materials science, environmental science, and climate modeling. We conclude with a discussion of related projects and future directions, and comment on near and long-term potential for network computing with the PVM system.

Integrated Pvm Framework Supports Heterogeneous Network Computing

The Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM), an integrated framework for heterogeneous network computing, lets scientists exploit collections of networked machines when carrying out complex scienti c computations. Under PVM, a user-de ned grouping of serial, parallel, and vector computers appears as one large distributed-memory machine. Con guring a personal parallel virtual computer involves simply listing the names of the machines in a le that is read when PVM is started. Applications can be written in Fortran 77 or C and parallelized by use of message-passing constructs common to most distributed-memory computers. With the use of messages sent over the network, multiple tasks of an application can cooperate to solve a problem in parallel. This article discusses components of PVM, including the programs and library of interface routines. It summarizes the characteristics of appropriate applications and discusses the current status and availability of PVM. In addition, the article introduces a recent extension to PVM known as the Heterogeneous Network Computing Environment (HeNCE).

HeNCE: graphical development tools for network-based concurrent computing

HeNCE (heterogeneous network computing environment) is an X Window based graphical parallel programming environment that was created to assist scientists and engineers with the development of parallel programs. HeNCE provides a graphical interface for creating, compiling, executing, and debugging parallel programs, as well as configuring a distributed virtual computer (using PVM). HeNCE programs can be run on a single Unix workstation or over a network of heterogeneous machines. The paper describes the purpose and use of the HeNCE software.<<ETX>>

Recent Enhancements To Pvm

This paper presents new features of PVM, a popular standard for writing parallel programs that execute over networks of heterogeneous machines. Although PVM has become an important infrastructure for paral lel programmers, we continue to develop the system based both on user feedback and our own research interests. In this paper we present new communica tions routines and briefly characterize their perfor mance. We describe new extensible services that allow advanced users to customize certain aspects of the de fault PVM functionality. An overview of shared-mem ory PVM optimizations is presented. PVMs new trac ing facility and a graphical console that utilizes this capability are described. Finally, we discuss future ex tensions to PVM now under investigation.

PVM: Experiences, current status and future direction

The computing requirements of many current and future applications, ranging from scientific computational problems in the material and physical sciences, to simulation, engineering design, and circuit analysis, are best served by concurrent processing. While hardware multiprocessors can frequently address the computational requirements of these high-performance applications, there are a number of integration aspects to concurrent computing that are not adequately addressed when conventional parallel processors are used to solve these problems.

HeNCE: a heterogenous network computing environment

Network computing seeks to utilize the aggregate resources of many networked computers to solve a single problem. In so doing it is often possible to obtain supercomputer performance from an inexpensive local area network. The drawback is that network computing is complicated and error prone when done by hand, especially if the computers have different operating systems and data formats and are thus heterogeneous. The heterogeneous network computing environment (HeNCE) is an integrated graphical environment for creating and running parallel programs over a heterogeneous collection of computers. It is built on a lower level package called parallel virtual machine (PVM). The HeNCE philosophy of parallel programming is to have the programmer graphically specify the parallelism of a computation and to automate, as much as possible, the tasks of writing, compiling, executing, debugging, and tracing the network computation. Key to HeNCE is a graphical language based on directed graphs that describe the parallelism and data dependencies of an application. Nodes in the graphs represent conventional Fortran or C subroutines and the arcs represent data and control flow. This article describes the present state of HeNCE, its capabilities, limitations, and areas of future research.

PVM and HeNCE: tools for heterogeneous network computing

Wide area computer networks have become a basic part of today’s computing infrastructure. These networks connect a variety of machines, presenting an enormous computing resource. In this project we focus on developing methods and tools which allow a programmer to tap into this resource. In this talk we describe PVM and HeNCE, tools and methodology under development that assists a programmer in developing programs to execute on a networked group of heterogeneous machines.