NHSE Software Catalog

PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine)

url

http://www.netlib.org/pvm3/index.html

abstract

PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is a software system that enables a
collection of heterogeneous computers to be used as a coherent and flexible
concurrent computational resource. The individual computers may
be shared- or local-memory multiprocessors, vector supercomputers,
specialized graphics engines, or scalar workstations, that may be
interconnected by a variety of networks, such as ethernet, FDDI, etc.
PVM support software executes on each machine in a user-configurable
pool, and presents a unified, general, and powerful computational
environment of concurrent applications. User programs written in C
or Fortran are provided access to PVM through the use of calls to
PVM library routines for functions such as process initiation,
message transmission and reception, and synchronization via barriers
or rendezvous. Users may optionally control the execution location of specific
application components. The PVM system transparently handles message
routing, data conversion for incompatible architectures, and other
tasks that are necessary for operation in a heterogeneous, network
environment.

keywords

message passing library; machine cluster

contact

pvm@msr.epm.ornl.gov

reference

http://www.netlib.org/pvm3/book/pvm-book.html