ComparisonofWebComintheContextofJobManagementSystems.docVIP

Comparison of WebCom in the context of Job Management Systems Dr. John P. Morrison, Mr Brian Clayton, Mr Adarsh Patil Centre for Unified Computing, Dept. Computer Science, National University of Ireland, Cork, Ireland. e-mail: j.morrison@cs.ucc.ie Telephone: +353 21 4902795 Fax: +353 21 4274390 Abstract A 2001 report for the NSA LUCITE Task Order on Productive Use of Distributed Reconfigurable Computing compares 12 Job Management Systems using 25 criteria designed to reflect “the most relevant system characteristics needed in the targeted distributed system for reconfigurable computing”. This paper presents a brief overview of the WebCom Meta computer and uses the previously mentioned characteristics to position it in relation to existing systems. Introduction to WebCom WebCom [1] is a platform for the distributed execution of instructions over a network of computers. The basic architecture of WebCom consists of a Master and an arbitrary number of client machines (figure 1). The clients voluntarily contribute to the processing power of the WebCom machine by connecting to the Master. Any machine with a Java Virtual Machine can become a client of WebCom. Figure 1 WebCom architecture Execution begins on a single server, to which clients connect using TCP/IP socket connections. Clients typically connect to WebCom via a webserver. The clients download an applet from the server and then execute it. Clients can be promoted to become masters. When they are promoted they can recruit clients to execute their atomic instructions, becoming the root of another computation tree in the grid. (figure 2) Figure 2 Client promotion Introduction to Comparison Study In 2001 researchers from George Mason University [2] built on the work of two previous papers, the “Cluster Computing Survey” by Baker et al. [3] and the Job Queuing/Scheduling Software comparative studies by Jones and Bricknell [4|5] to profile and rank 12 Job Management systems according to 25 criteria. The 12 systems e