Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: wrankin@duke.edu (William T. Rankin)
Subject: Re: threading?
Organization: Duke University EE Dept.; Durham, NC
Date: 14 Nov 1997 15:50:17 GMT
Message-ID: <64hrvp$6o7$1@news.duke.edu>

In article <346A8EE0.20535833@netscape.com>,
adamsch1  <adamsch1@netscape.com> wrote:
>I've noticed that the pvm_spawn() just runs a binary file in the
>machine.  I've seen no mention of threads. Is this because pvm lacks a
>shared memory model which threads would require???

Yes, PVM is processed-based distributed parallelism, not thread based.
If you are going to program in threads on a single platform, then you 
really don't need PVM.  If you want to run across multiple platforms,
then a threads-only implementation has obvious problems. :-)

Mixed-mode thread/PVM hybrid models are really attractive for some
problems (eg. implementing active-messaging within a PVM context),
but great care must be taken as the current production and beta
releases of PVM are not thread-safe.

Someone in another article mentioned TPVM, which is a thread-safe
implementation of PVM.

Anyone know about the current state of thread safty and future
PVM 3.4 releases?

-bill rankin


-- 
bill rankin ...................................... philosopher/coffee-drinker
wrankin@ee.duke.edu ........................................ doctoral wannabe
duke university dept. of electrical engr ......... scientific computing group