Asynchronism for iterative algorithms in a global computing environment

Abstract

The subject of this paper is to show the very high power of asynchronism for iterative algorithms in the context of global computing, that is to say, with machines scattered all around the world. The question is whether or not asynchronism helps to reduce the communication penalty and the overall computation time of a given parallel algorithm. The asynchronous programming model is applied to a given problem implemented with a multi-threaded environment and tested over two kinds of clusters of workstations; a homogeneous local cluster and a heterogeneous non-local one. The main features of this programming model are exhibited and the high efficiency and interest of such algorithms is pointed out.