Very fast distributed spreadsheet computing

Abstract

A very fast distributed spreadsheet computing program has been implemented on a distributed memory (message-passing) system with ~40 sparcstations in a local Ethernet network. With a two-stage accelerating refinement procedure — the introduction of the high-speed ECE-SC 1 1 An equivalent C expression substitution of the corresponding computing subroutines in the spreadsheet framework. program and its distributed implementation, a major (a total acceleration factor 2 2 The acceleration factor denotes a general performance gain comparing the terms of speedup. Speedup = T 1 T n , where T 1 is running time on one processor and T n the time on n processors. The main acceleration is contributed by the ECE-SC substitution. of 373 has been reached with 10 Sparcstation 1s) —acceleration has been achieved. Two versions of the distributed program have been implemented via direct stream socket programming and the parallel virtual machine environment, respectively. Experiments show that only a minor performance difference exists between these two implementations. The developed working mechanism, independent of the target machine and the spreadsheet program used, is, in principle, the fastest for the parallel implementation of spreadsheet computing.