Experiences in pure Java implementation of parallel libraries

Abstract

Network-based high performance computing is gaining increasing popularity among the parallel computing community. Current parallel environments such as MPI (Message Passing Interface) or BSP (Bulk Synchronous Parallel) cannot be applied readily to heterogeneous computing platforms. In order to exploit the maximum performance potential that a heterogeneous environment brings, we conducted some experiments on implementing parallel libraries in pure Java, a fully platform-independent language. The paper describes our experiences in the implementation of MPI and BSP in pure Java. Implementation and efficiency issues such as data transport, network communication, support thread, barrier synchronization and dynamic class loading mechanism are discussed in detail.