Process migration protocols for massively parallel systems

Abstract

Process migration is known as the run time relocation of a process within a network of processors. This capability is mainly used for efficient management of resources in a distributed system. This paper deals with the construction of process migration mechanisms for Massively Parallel Systems (MPS). In particular, we are interested in the correction of communications in presence of migration. Many distributed systems have proposed mechanisms for process migration where different approaches are used to ensure transparency and correctness of the delivery of messages. In MPS, more than achieving correctness and transparency, the emphasis is put also on supporting scalability of the machine architecture, and on efficiency by minimising the overhead introduced by the use of the migration mechanisms at run-time. According to these criteria we propose three migration protocols for correct message passing mechanisms.<>