Evaluating the efficiency of Linda implementations

Abstract

Summary Among the paradigms for parallel and distributed computing, the one popularized with Linda, and based on tuple spaces, is one of the least used, despite the fact of being intuitive, easy to understand, and easy to use. A tuple space is a repository, where processes can add, withdraw, or read tuples by means of atomic operations. Tuples may contain different values, and processes can inspect their content via pattern matching. The lack of a reference implementation for this paradigm has prevented its wide spreading. In this paper, first we perform an extensive analysis of a number of actual implementations of the tuple space paradigm and summarize their main features. Then, we select four such implementations and compare their performances on four different case studies that aim at stressing different aspects of computing, such as communication, data manipulation, and CPU usage. After reasoning on strengths and weaknesses of the four implementations, we conclude with some recommendations for future work towards building an effective implementation of the tuple space paradigm.

Developing political-ecological theory: The need for many-task computing

“…Two notes are in order. JavaSpaces has a theoretical foundation in computer science [ 51 , 52 ] that the other four technologies lack. Developing an MTC application with Docker Swarm Mode appears to require more user involvement with the runtime system than the other four technologies.…”

“…The runtime system Gigaspaces™ that supports the JavaSpaces API exhibits low inter-node communication latency [52]. The primary operations on a Gigaspaces space are write, read, change, take, and aggregation [53,54].…”

A Formal Approach to the Engineering of Domain-Specific Distributed Systems

“…Especially at the beginning of this century, with the manifest pervasivity of the Internet, many researchers have considered both models and implementations of network-aware formalisms that have or have been influenced by the work on Klaim and other Linda-based models and primitives. In [31], many implementations of Linda-based models, including Klaim-based ones, to coordinate the interactions among system components are described and their efficiency is assessed. Instead, [32] is a recent survey of coordination techniques for distributed and mobile systems, including those based on Linda and those relying on different coordination models.…”