PSPVM: implementing PVM on a high-speed interconnect for workstation clusters

PSPVM in an implementation of the PVM package on top of ParaStations
high-speed interconnent for workstation clusters. The ParaStation
system uses user level communication for message exchange and
removes the operating system from the critical path of message
transmission. ParaStations user interface consists of a user-level
socket emulation. Thus, we need only minor changes to the standard
PVM package to get it running on the ParaStation system.

Throughput of the PSPVM is increased eight times and latency is
reduced by a factor of four compared to regular PVM. The remaining
latency is mainly ($88\%$) caused by the PVM package itself. The
underlying sockets are so fast (25$\mu$s) that the PVM package is
the limiting factor. PSPVM offers nearly the raw performance of
the network to the user and is object-code compatible to regular PVM. As
a consequence, we achieve an application speed-up of four to six over
traditional PVM using regular ethernet on a cluster of workstations.