Parallel and Distributed Computing using Pervasive Web and Object Technologies

Abstract

We review the growing power and capability of commodity computing and communication technologies largely driven by commercial distributed information systems. These systems are built from CORBA, Microsoft's COM, Javabeans, and less sophisticated web and networked approaches. One can abstract these to a three-tier model with largely independent clients connected to a distributed network of servers. The latter host various services including object and relational databases and, of course, parallel and sequential computing. High performance can be obtained by combining concurrency at the middle-server tier with optimized parallel back-end services. The resultant system combines the needed performance for large-scale HPCC applications with the rich functionality of commodity systems. Further, the architecture with distinct interface, server and specialized service implementation layers, naturally allows advances in each area to be easily incorporated. We show that this approach can be applied to both metacomputing and to provide improved parallel programming environments. We describe exploitation issues within a CORBA context and illustrate how performance can be obtained within a commodity architecture. Examples are given from collaborative systems, support of multidisciplinary interactions, proposed visual HPCC ComponentWare, distributed simulation, and the use of Java in high-performance computing.