JAVELIN DOCUMENTS

• The documents below are in reverse chronological order. The corresponding author's name is bold.
• We also have citation information in Bibtex format.

Javelin: Internet-Based Parallel Computing Using Java

Authors: Peter Cappello, Bernd Oliver Christiansen, Mihai F. Ionescu, Michael O. Neary, Klaus E. Schauser, and Daniel Wu

1997 ACM Workshop on Java for Science and Engineering Computation, Las Vegas, June 1997.

Abstract: Java offers the basic infrastructure needed to integrate computers connected to the Internet into a seamless parallel computational resource: a flexible, easily-installed infrastructure for running coarse-grained parallel applications on numerous, anonymous machines. Ease of participation is seen as a key property for such a resource to realize the vision of a multiprocessing environment comprising thousands of computers.

We present Javelin, a Java-based infrastructure for global computing. The system is based on Internet software technology that is essentially ubiquitous: Web technology. Its architecture and implementation require participants to have access only to a Java-enabled Web browser. The security constraints implied by this, the resulting architecture, and current implementation are presented. The Javelin architecture is intended to be a substrate on which various programming models may be implemented. Several such models are presented: A Linda Tuple Space, an SPMD programming model with barriers, as well as support for message passing. Experimental results are given in the form of micro-benchmarks and a Mersenne Prime application that runs on a heterogeneous network of several parallel machines, workstations, and PCs.

Keywords: Global computing, Internet, Java, just-in-time compilation, World-Wide-Web.

Paper in PostScript.

SuperWeb: Towards a Web-Based Global Computing Infrastructure

Authors: Maximilian Ibel, Albert D. Alexandrov, Klaus E. Schauser, and Chris J. Scheiman

Proc. 11th International Parallel Processing Symposium, Geneva, SWITZERLAND, April 1997.

Abstract: The Internet, in particular the World-Wide-Web, continues to expand at an amazing pace. We propose a new infrastructure, SuperWeb, to harness global resources, such as CPU cycles or disk storage, and make them available to every user on the Internet. SuperWeb has the potential for solving parallel supercomputing applications involving thousands of cooperating components on the Internet. However, we anticipate that initial implementations will be used inside large organizations with large heterogeneous Intranets. Our approach is based on recent advances in Internet connectivity and the implementation of safe distributed computing realized by languages such as Java.

Our SuperWeb prototype consists of brokers, clients, and hosts. Hosts register a fraction of their computing resources (CPU time, memory, bandwidth, disk space) with resource brokers. Clients submit tasks that need to be executed. The broker maps client computations onto the registered hosts. We examine an economic model for trading computing resources, and discuss several technical challenges associated with such a global computing environment.

Keywords: Global computing, Internet, Java, supercomputing, secure computing, electronic commerce, encrypted computing

Paper in PostScript.