*) previously: University of Augsburg, D-86159 Augsburg, Germany
**) Computing Center, University of Augsburg, Universitätsstraße 8
D-86159 Augsburg, Germany
The research topic is the distributed execution of parallel programs that are
originally written for shared-memory multiprocessors. We introduce a interface for
parallel and distributed programming based on POSIX Threads. Our interface relies on any
underlying distributed systems, but allows the description of medium- and coarse-grained
parallelism in a uniform manner.
Threads can be used for medium-grained parallel components and coarse-grained components
can be distributed. By providing a global data space we are able to raise the concept of
threads to a higher level of concurrency - threads may be spread over several
heterogeneous machines and are therefore called remote threads (Rthreads). We have
implemented the Rthreads system on top of PVM, MPI, and DCE.
The project ended with the doctoral thesis of Bernd Dreier (1998) and of Markus Zahn (1999) at the University of Augsburg.
B. Dreier, M. Zahn, T. Ungerer: Parallel and Distributed Programming with Pthreads and Rthreads. 3rd International Workshop on High-Level Parallel Programming Models and Supportive Environments in conjunction with: First Merged Symposium IPPS/SPDP, Orlando, Florida, March 30 - April 3, 1998, Workshop Proceedings, pp 34 - 40 (pdf-Version).
B. Dreier, M. Zahn, T. Ungerer: Rthreads: A Software Distributed Shared Memory System for Distributed Execution of POSIX Threads. The Third International Conference on Massively Parallel Computing Systems MPCS'98, Colorado Springs, April 6-9, 1998 (pdf-Version).
B. Dreier, M. Zahn, T. Ungerer: Parallele und verteilte Programmierung mittels Pthreads und Rthreads. 1. Workshop Cluster-Computing, Chemnitz, 6. -7 . November 1997, Chemnitzer Informatik-Berichte CSR-97-05, pp. 63 - 85 (in German, pdf-Version).
B. Dreier, M. Zahn, T. Ungerer: RThreads - a Uniform Interface for Parallel and Distributed Programming. Proceedings of the "Second International Conference on Massively Parallel Computing Systems MPCS ´96", Ischia, May 6-9, 1996, 530-534.
B. Dreier, T. Ungerer: Implementing Distributed Shared Memory Based on DCE. Proceedings of the "3rd Euromicro Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Processing", San Remo, January 25-27, 1995, 84 - 90.
B. Dreier, T. Ungerer: Towards Distributed Shared Memory in DCE. Proceedings of the "Eighth Symposium on Microcomputer and Microprocessor Applications", Budapest, October 12-14, 1994, 276 - 284.
(in German) B. Dreier, T. Ungerer: Transformation paralleler Programme zur verteilten Ausführung auf einem Rechnernetz unter DCE. GI/ITG Workshop PARS, Potsdam, September 19-20, 1994, PARS-Mitteilungen, Vol. 13, 95 - 104.
See also the ReGTime - Rent Gigaflops sometimes project.
To Ungerer's
homepage.
Theo Ungerer, April
2006