Paper Info
Title
The ParaStation project: using workstations as building blocks for parallel computing
Abstract
The Parastation communication fabric provides a high-speed communication network with user-level access to enable efficient parallel computing on workstation clusters. The architecture, implemented on off-the-shelf workstations coupled by the Parastation communication hardware, removes the kernel and common network protocols from the communication path while still providing full protection in a multiuser, multiprogramming environment. The programming interface presented by Parastation consists of a UNIX socket emulation and widely used parallel programming environments such as PVM, P4, and MPI. This allows porting a wide range of client/server and parallel applications to the Parastation architecture. Implementations of Parastation using various platforms, such as Digital's AlphaGeneration workstations and Linux PCs, achieve end-to-end (process-to-process) latencies as low as 2 @ms and a sustained bandwidth of up to 15 Mbyte/s per channel with small packets. Benchmarks using PVM on Parastation demonstrate real application performance of 1 GFLOP on an 8-node cluster.
Year
DOI
Venue
1998
10.1016/S0020-0255(97)10015-9
Information Sciences
Keywords
Field
DocType
common network protocol,parastation communication fabric,alphageneration workstations,parallel application,communication path,parallel programming environment,efficient parallel computing,parallel computing,high-speed communication network,parastation communication hardware,parastation project,parastation architecture,parallel computer
Computer architecture,Computer science,Parallel computing,Workstation,Operating system
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
106
3-4
0020-0255
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
0.91
9
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Thomas M. Warschko1256.85
Joachim M. Blum2245.15
Walter F. Tichy32546438.90