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Parallel computing on wide-area clusters: the Albatross project


Author(s) : Rob Nieuwpoort Jason Maassen Thilo Kielmann Aske Plaat Henri E. Bal Ronald Veldema, 
Publisher : N/A
Publication Date : 1999
ISSN : N/A
Abstract : The aim of the Albatross project is to study applications and programming environments for widearea cluster computers, which consist of multiple clusters connected by wide-area networks. Parallel processing on such systems is useful but challenging, given the large di erences in latency and bandwidth between LANs and WANs. We apply application-level optimizations that exploit the hierarchical structure of wide-area clusters to minimize communication over the WANs. In addition, we use highly e cient local-area communication protocols. We illustrate this approach using a highperformance Java system that is implemented on a collection of four Myrinet-based clusters connected by wide-area ATM networks. The optimized applications obtain high speedups on this wide-area system. 1,