Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2001

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Electrical Engineering

Major Professor

J. D. Birdwell

Committee Members

T. W. Wang, H. Qi

Abstract

Congestion in network switches can limit the communication traffic between Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) nodes in a parallel computation. The research introduces a new benchmark to evaluate the performance of PVM in various networking environments. The benchmark is used to achieve a better understanding of performance limitations in parallel computing that are imposed by the choice of the network. The networks considered here are Fast Ethernet, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) OC-3c (155Mb/s) and Myrinet. Together, they represent an interesting range of alternatives for parallel cluster computing. A characterization of network delays and throughput and a comparison of the expected costs of the three environments are developed to provide a basis for an informed decision on the networking methods and topology for a parallel database that is being considered for FBI's National DNA Indexing System (NDIS)[17]. This network is used for communications among the nodes of the parallel machine; thus the security requirements defined for the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division Wide Area Network (CJIS-WAN) [12] are not a concern.

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