A Flexible Multi-protocol Communication Architecture for Metacomputing Systems

摘要

Exploiting multiple communication protocols is often required by current large-scale applications in order to build computational grids or metacomputers by which it is possible both to solve complex problems and to access distributed computing resources at low cost. However, computational grids and metacomputers are usually characterized by a high level of heterogeneity with respect to the architecture of both computing nodes and interconnection networks. This paper presents the design of a multi-protocol communication architecture for metacomputing applications in Java. In particular, the paper analyses aspects regarding both the dynamic integration of different protocols in a metacomputer and the design of communication modules that can reduce the overhead caused by critical paths of communicating Java objects.