Flexible group-based interprocess communication facilities for heterogeneous parallel architectures

PDVM (Parallel and Distributed Virtual Machine) is a runtime environment targeted at the execution of parallel programs in a heterogeneous architecture composed of distributed-memory multiprocessors and uniprocessors connected by a local area network. The most distinctive feature of PDVM is its support for group-based communication primitives. Several dimensions arise when defining a group-based communication facility. The type of process groups supported can range from groups with static composition and no guarantees of ordered delivery of successive broadcasts to dynamic process groups which guarantee an uniform and consistent view for all the members of the group, concerning communication and membership changes. Of course, increased functionality is paid in more overhead. PDVM allows the programmer to specify the properties of the group in its creation, according to the needs of the application. On the other side PDVM uses techniques borrowed from Horus to achieve efficient implementations of richer semantics for groups.