Screen Saver Science: Parallel Distributed Computing with
Java/Jini/JavaSpaces
William L. George
NIST/MCSD/SAVG
Tuesday, October 1, 2002 15:00-16:00,
Room 145, NIST North (820)
Gaithersburg
Tuesday, October 1, 2002 13:00-14:00,
Room 4550
Boulder
Abstract:
I will describe the Screen Saver Science project (SSS), a project
aimed at harnessing the unused processing power of desktops,
workstations, and other processors, using nothing more than a thin
software layer on top of the technologies available in Java, Jini,
and
JavaSpaces (JJJ). I will first describe the basics of the JJJ
technologies and the basic SSS infrastructure. I will then
outline
the parallel programming model this environment will expose to the
user and the general characteristics of applications that will
best
fit this model. Many questions remain on the feasibility of this
type
of system as a production quality scientific computing
environment,
such as computing and communications performance and security,
however
I am optimistic that these issues will soon be solved or
minimized.
The ultimate goal of this project is to make available, here at
NIST,
a
scientific computing resource capable of handling very large
computations that may not be suitable for any other available
computing resource.
To place this project in context, comparisons will be made to
related topics such as Grid computing, Peer-to-Peer computing,
and High-Throughput computing (e.g. SETI@Home).
Contact: A. J. KearsleyNote: Visitors from outside NIST must contact
Robin Bickel; (301) 975-3668;
at least 24 hours in advance.
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