PVM communication performance over an ATM MAN

Abstract

This paper presents results of the performance tests of the PVM system over an ATM Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is a communication package, which is considered currently a de facto standard for the development of high-performance distributed applications. ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is the emerging cell-switching technology for high-speed networks. This work is part of the experiments of heterogeneous network computing in the framework of the Neanet Project. Neanet is one of the first public high-speed networks based on ATM. The ultimate goal of the experiments is to assess the effectiveness of ATM geographical networks for high-performance computing. Besides allowing comparison with local area networks, the FVM performance figures are useful per se in the design and in the predictive performance evaluation of distributed applications on ATM networks.