GMI: Flexible and Efficient Group Method Invocation for Parallel Programming
Jason Maassen, Thilo Kielmann, Henri E. Bal · 2002
We present a generalization of Java's Remote Method Invocation model (RMI) providing an efficient group communication mechanism for parallel programming. Our Group Method Invocation model (GMI) allows methods to be invoked either on a single object or on a group of objects, the latter possibly with personalized parameters. Likewise, result values and exceptions can be returned normally (as with RMI), discarded, or, when multiple results are produced, combined into a single result. The different method invocation and reply handling schemes can be combined orthogonally, allowing us to express a large spectrum of communication mechanisms of which RMI and MPI-style collective communication are special cases. With GMI, the invocation and reply schemes can be selected for each method individually at run time.