WAMM 1.0

                                 Overview

   Ranieri Baraglia, Gianluca Faieta, Marcello Formica, Domenico Laforenza

CNUCE - Institute of the Italian National Research Council
Via S.Maria, 36 - I56100 Pisa, Italy
Tel. +39-50-593111 - Fax +39-50-904052
email: R.Baraglia@cnuce.cnr.it, D.Laforenza@cnuce.cnr.it
       meta@calpar.cnuce.cnr.it



Developing metacomputing environments entails resolving several problems, both
hardware (networks, mass memories with parallel access, etc.) and software
(languages, development environments, resource management tools, etc). Although
many of the hardware problems are close to a solution, software problems are
still far from being resolved.

The development environments currently available generally have tools for
managing the resources of the metacomputer, but often do not have adequate
tools for designing and writing programs. Without such tools, software design
cycle for metacomputers can come up against considerable difficulties.
Typically, building an application for a metacomputer involves the following
steps:

  - user writes the source files on a local node of the metacomputer;

  - source files are then transferred on every node;

  - the related compilation is made on all nodes;

  - if errors are detected or modifications made, then all the previous steps
    are repeated.


Compilation is needed on each node since it is not possible to determine a
priori on which machines the modules that make up the application will be run.
If the right tools are not available then user has to manually transfer source
files and execute the corresponding compilation on all the nodes; such
operations have to be repeated whenever even the smallest error needs to be
corrected. Therefore, even with just a few machines, a method to make these
operations automatic is essential.

Some metacomputing environments provide tools to control certain aspects of
configuration and management of the virtual machine, such as the activation,
insertion and removal of nodes. In certain cases, however, easier to use
management tools are needed, above all when large metacomputers with several
nodes are being worked on.

To alleviate these problems, we have developed a graphical interface based on
OSF/Motif and PVM, which simplifies operations normally carried out to program
and use applications for metacomputers, as well as for managing parallel
virtual machines.