PSPVM: Implementing PVM on a high-speed interconnect for workstation clusters

PSPVM in an implementation of the PVM package on top of ParaStations high-speed interconnent for workstation clusters. The ParaStation system uses user level communication for message exchange and removes the operating system from the critical path of message transmission. ParaStations user interface consists of a user-level socket emulation. Thus, we need only minor changes to the standard PVM package to get it running on the ParaStation system. Throughput of the PSPVM is increased eight times and latency is reduced by a factor of four compared to regular PVM. The remaining latency is mainly (88%) caused by the PVM package itself. The underlying sockets are so fast (25μs) that the PVM package is the limiting factor. PSPVM offers nearly the raw performance of the network to the user and is object-code compatible to regular PVM. As a consequence, we achieve an application speed-up of four to six over traditional PVM using regular ethernet on a cluster of workstations.