Faculty Advisor
Dr. Peter Graham

Grant
$9,500 on 5/22/97

Funding
To support graduate student in thesis work, to hire a summer undergraduate research assistant, and to purchase a Pentium Computer to investigate the provision of high performance messaging using active messages between systems running heterogeneous operating systems. The project will include a prototype implementation on three platforms, and application of the active message concept to DSM systems will also be examined.

Heterogenous Active Messages Abstract
Building on the work of Thorsten Von Eicken's "active messages" and subsequent related work, this project is exploring the possibility of supporting such fast messaging on commercial networks between hosts of different types (and OSs, etc).

Currently, implementations are being done on Unix and Win/NT. The initial testbed platform is two Pentium-II 266 processors connected by dedicated fast Ethernet. We have also made application for an ATM switch through a Canadian granting agency and expect to have that switch for comparative testing by early summer. Once the cross-platform version works, we will extend the software to run on a different machine architecture. The final stage will be comparing the performance on various platforms and machine and network architectures to attempt to draw useful insights for subsequent work.

Current Status as of 3/98
First prototype being constructed.

Web Site
NONE