Performance of parallel communication and spawning primitives on a Linux cluster

The Linux cluster considered in this paper, formed from shuttle box XPC nodes with 2 GHz Athlon processors connected by dual Gb Ethernet switches, is relatively easily constructed, but, while effective as a throughput engine, may result in disappointing results when running explicitly parallel software if weakly-performing communication mechanisms and process spawning are selected. This paper carefully compares the implementations of communication and spawning primitives in MPICH-2, openMosix, and Linux Remote Procedure Call, forking, and various lower-level communication mechanisms. The test selection compares the provision of both a message-passing library, and a single system image software package, with direct use of lower-level primitives. The information in the paper will be of interest to those considering the use of one of the well-known packages, or directly writing their own distributed applications, or constructing a distributed language by layering on top of an existing se...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: CLUSTER
• Authors: David J. Johnston, Martin Fleury, Michael Lincoln, Andy C. Downton
• Keywords: CLUSTER 2006, Communication Mechanisms, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Lower-level Communication Mechanisms, Weakly-performing Communication Mechanisms