Experiments with a Software Component Enabling NetSolve with Direct Communications in a Non-Intrusive and Incremental Way

The paper presents a software component that enables NetSolve with direct communications between servers in a non-intrusive and incremental way. Non-intrusiveness means that the software component is supplementary, working on top of the original system, which does not change at all. Increment means that the software component does not have to be installed on all computers to enable applications with the new feature. It can be done incrementally, step by step, and the new feature can be enabled in part, with the completeness dependent on how many nodes have been upgraded with the software component. The paper describes the design and implementation of the software component. The paper also reports on experiments with three typical scientific NetSolve applications having different communication structures: (i) protein tertiary structure prediction, (ii) image processing using sequential algorithms, and (iii) the matrix chain product. The presented experimental results show that the performance of these grid applications can be easily and significantly improved by using the proposed supplementary software component.