Language- and application-oriented resource management for parallel architectures

Abstract

General-purpose operating systems, such as UNIX, which evolved on single processor machines, have made the transition, in one form or another, to parallel architectures (e.g. Rothnie, 1992; Holman, 1992). However, it is not clear that all users of parallel architectures require the virtual machine presented by a general-purpose operating system (e.g. Bryant et al., 1991). It is unfortunate if such users are given the alternatives of either compromising with whatever operating system interface is available, or writing all the low-level routines for themselves. One solution to this problem is to provide customisable systems, so that for high performance, parallel applications acquire a tailored resource management environment (e.g. Mukherjee and Schwan, 1993). This paper first gives some background to applications and operating systems, and then describes a flexible and extensible system currently being developed.