Parallel processing of chemical information in a local area network — I. HYDRA: Concept, configuration, and implementation of parallel applications

Abstract

Sophisticated software packages put an increasing demand on computer hardware. In local area networks, computational intensive programs can lower the performance of individual workstations to an unacceptable level. However, utilizing in a coarse grained sense the computing power of all hosts in such networks, offers the potential to achieve considerable improvements in execution speed within reasonable cost limits. Since conventional workstations are not designed to be used in a parallel configuration, the program HYDRA is developed to control and synchronize parallel processing in a local area network. Part I of this paper focuses on the technical aspects of HYDRA, i.e. configuration and implementation. The second and third parts describe two applications of the HYDRA package in the field of chemistry: using parallel genetic algorithms for the conformational analysis of nucleic acids, and parallel cross-validation of artificial neural networks.