Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) is a

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

tool for parallel networking of

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

s. It is designed to allow a network of heterogeneous Unix and/or Windows machines to be used as a single distributed parallel processor. Thus large computational problems can be solved more cost effectively by using the aggregate power and memory of many computers. The software is very portable; the source code, available free through netlib, has been compiled on everything from

laptop A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a Clamshell design, clamshell form factor (design), form factor with a flat-panel computer scree ...

s to

Cray Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed ...

s. PVM enables users to exploit their existing computer hardware to solve much larger problems at less additional cost. PVM has been used as an educational tool to teach

parallel programming Parallel computing is a type of computing, computation in which many calculations or Process (computing), processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. ...

but has also been used to solve important practical problems. It was developed by the

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (or The University of Tennessee; UT; UT Knoxville; or colloquially UTK or Tennessee) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee, United St ...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1943, the laboratory is sponsored by the United Sta ...

and

Emory University Emory University is a private university, private research university in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in 1836 as Emory College by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory. Its main campu ...

. The first version was written at ORNL in 1989, and after being rewritten by University of Tennessee, version 2 was released in March 1991. Version 3 was released in March 1993, and supported

fault tolerance Fault tolerance is the ability of a system to maintain proper operation despite failures or faults in one or more of its components. This capability is essential for high-availability, mission-critical, or even life-critical systems. Fault t ...

and better portability. PVM was a step towards modern trends in distributed processing and

grid computing Grid computing is the use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished fro ...

but has, since the mid-1990s, largely been supplanted by the much more successful

MPI MPI or Mpi may refer to: Science and technology Biology and medicine * Magnetic particle imaging, a tomographic technique * Myocardial perfusion imaging, a medical procedure that illustrates heart function * Mannose phosphate isomerase, an enzyme ...

standard for message passing on parallel machines. PVM is

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

, released under both the

BSD License BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lic ...

and the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

Design

PVM is a software system that enables a collection of heterogeneous computers to be used as a coherent and flexible concurrent computational resource, or a "parallel

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

". The individual computers may be shared-memory or local-memory

multiprocessor Multiprocessing (MP) is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. The ...

vector Vector most often refers to: * Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction * Disease vector, an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematics a ...

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

s, specialized graphics engines, or scalar

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...

s and PCs, that may be interconnected by a variety of networks, such as

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

FDDI Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) is a standard for data transmission in a local area network. It uses optical fiber as its standard underlying physical medium. It was also later specified to use copper cable, in which case it may be c ...

. PVM consists of a run-time environment and library for

message passing In computer science, message passing is a technique for invoking behavior (i.e., running a program) on a computer. The invoking program sends a message to a process (which may be an actor or object) and relies on that process and its supporting ...

, task and resource management, and fault notification. While PVM will not automatically make a commercial software package run faster, it ''does'' provide a powerful set of functions for manually parallelizing an existing source program, or for writing new parallel/distributed programs. The PVM software must be specifically installed on every machine that is to be used in a given "virtual machine". There is no "automatic" installation of

executable In computer science, executable code, an executable file, or an executable program, sometimes simply referred to as an executable or binary, causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instruction (computer science), in ...

s onto remote machines in PVM, although simply copying the pvm3/lib and pvm3/bin directories to another ''similar'' machine (and setting $PVM_ROOT and $PVM_ARCH) is sufficient for running PVM programs.

Compiling In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

or building PVM programs requires the full PVM installation. User programs written in C, C++, or Fortran can access PVM through provided library routines. PVM also supports

broadcasting Broadcasting is the data distribution, distribution of sound, audio audiovisual content to dispersed audiences via a electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), ...

(PVM_bcast) which sends to all processes in a group and multicasting (PVM_mcast) which sends to a specific list of processes.

References

External links

* * {{Parallel Computing Parallel computing Inter-process communication Virtualization software Software using the BSD license

Design

See also

References

External links