Heterogeneous network computing

Abstract

HeNCE (Heterogeneous Network Computing Environment) is a parallel programming paradigm and tool which supports the creation, compilation, execution, debugging, and analysis of parallel programs for a heterogeneous group of computers. The HeNCE programmer specifies the parallelism of a computation by drawing a graph describing the dependencies between user defined procedures. HeNCE will then automatically execute these procedures on a user defined collection of machines on some network. Different versions of a procedure may exist for different architectures. HeNCE executes the appropriate version of a procedure for a chosen target machine architecture. HeNCE maps procedures to machines based on a user defined cost matrix. The HeNCE user dynamically configures a parallel collection of machines, referred to as a parallel virtual machine, on which the HeNCE program is to be run.