Viability of Multithreading on Networks of Workstations

Abstract. Recent trend in high-performance computing focuses on networks of workstations (NOWs) as a way ofrealizing cost-effective parallel machines. This has been due to the availability of powerful wide-issue processors, high-speed networks, and software infrastructure systems. Due to its distributed nature, message-passing has been the choice of communication model for NOWs. This paper, however, examines the viability of using multithreading on NOWs. A matrix multiplication alwas studied by simulating a shared-memory abstraction on top of Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) to characterize the behavior of multithreading. Our experiments indicate the performance of multithreading, with a small number of threads per processor, is very comparable to that of programs written using message-passing. Our studies also show multithreading has an added advantage over message-passing in that it is relatively insensitive to initial data distribution.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: PACT
• Authors: Hantak Kwak, Ben Lee, Ali R. Hurson
• Keywords: Cost-effective Parallel Machines, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Multithreading, PACT 1997, Powerful Wide-issue Processors