Paper Details

WEAVE: A System for Dynamic Configuration of Virtual Links

Authors: Harrison, S. R., Brown, Chris R.

Abstract:

This paper describes Weave, a system which has been developed to support the use of a DS Link (IEEE 1355) based parallel computer architecture. Weave is an extension layer on IIPC (a simple transputer and UNIX parallel processing environment which provides dynamic process management, hardware transparency and message passing.) Although Weave is suitable for any T9000 Transputer network, it has been specifically designed to support the use of the AIVRU DS Link Vision Engine. A brief description is given of this machine, which processes live digital video using a mixture of hardware modules and software processes, all interconnected by DS Links. Weave provides the ability to make virtual link connections between processes on demand at run-time. These connections may be disconnected when no longer required, and hence the whole hardware architecture is dynamically reconfigured automatically to suit the requirements of the software application. A small functional interface provides processes with the ability to alter their own connectivity, and that of other processes. A temporal locking mechanism for each virtual link controls when it may be disconnected, and when pending connection requests can be fulfilled. This locking mechanism is driven by the action of communication over the virtual link. The Weave system supports transparently, the creation and destruction of connections between software processes and the image processing hardware modules (and between hardware modules directly). Also provided transparently by Weave is support for the use of hardware message replicator module(s) that multicast virtual link data to any number of DS Link recipients.

Proceedings:

Proceedings of WoTUG-20: Parallel Programming and Java, André W. P. Bakkers, 1997, pp 138 - 151 published by IOS Press, Amsterdam

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