Opportunities and Tools for Highly Interactive Distributed and Parallel Computing
Greg Eisenhauer, Weiming Gu, Thomas Kindler, Karsten Schwan, Dilma M. Silva, Jeffrey S. Vetter · 1994
Advances in networking, visualization and parallel computing signal the end of the days of batchmode processing for computationally intensive applications. The ability to control and interact with these applications in real-time offers both opportunities and challenges. This paper examines two computationally intensive scientific applications and discusses the ways in which more interactivity in their computations presents opportunities for gain. It briefly examines the requirements for systems trying to exploit these opportunities and discusses Falcon, a system that attempts to fulfill these requirements. 1 Introduction The world of computationally intensive computing is moving away from the batch-oriented style of processing. Users accustomed to spreadsheets and WYSIWYG word processing are not satisfied with the traditional hands-off, you'll-get-your-data-when-the-batch-queue-empties mode of running parallel programs. At the same time, high-speed network interfaces and the prolifera...