Using Commodity Networks for Distributed Computing Research

We describe a zero-copy network programming interface that is suitable for parallel processing, local area networks and real-time multimedia applications. This interface is suitable for directly programming applications or as an intermediate layer for existing distributed computing libraries. Using this approach, buffers in host memory are directly managed by the network hardware interface, thus eliminating the need for copying data from network interface buffers to host memory. A distributed system, made up of commodity workstations interconnected by dedicated ATM hardware, functions as a custom packet switched interconnection network typically used in high performance parallel machines.

By: Ronald Mraz, Douglas Freimuth, Edward Nowicki and Gabriel Silberman

Published in: RC20445 in 1995

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