From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: ishwar@pali.cps.cmich.edu, 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] Parallel computing and Plan9 From: dpx@acl.lanl.gov MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="upas-nofrqnuwourwjekyqskoasiyoj" Message-Id: <20010724160849.10FEE199DD@mail.cse.psu.edu> Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:10:15 -0600 Topicbox-Message-UUID: d4d74910-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --upas-nofrqnuwourwjekyqskoasiyoj Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit One idea for message passing is to use pipes. Plan9 make it easy to start pipes and then import them from remote machines. In our group here we are in the early stages of trying this out. There is some very preliminary info at http://www.acl.lanl.gov/plan9/mp/ -dp --upas-nofrqnuwourwjekyqskoasiyoj Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Received: from acl.lanl.gov ([128.165.147.1]) by plan9; Fri Jul 20 13:16:28 MDT 2001 Received: (from dpx@localhost) by acl.lanl.gov (8.11.3/8.8.5) id f6KJGS24295363 for dpx@[128.165.147.177]; Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:16:28 -0600 (MDT) Received: from mailrelay3.lanl.gov (mailrelay3.lanl.gov [128.165.3.1]) by acl.lanl.gov (8.11.3/8.8.5) with ESMTP id f6KJGRp4740302; Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:16:27 -0600 (MDT) Received: from mailproxy1.lanl.gov (mailproxy1.lanl.gov [128.165.0.26]) by mailrelay3.lanl.gov (8.11.4/8.11.4/(ccn-5)) with ESMTP id f6KJGR819323; Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:16:27 -0600 Received: from mail.cse.psu.edu (psuvax1.cse.psu.edu [130.203.4.6]) by mailproxy1.lanl.gov (8.11.4/8.11.4/(ccn-5)) with ESMTP id f6KJGQE15161; Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:16:26 -0600 Received: from psuvax1.cse.psu.edu (psuvax1.cse.psu.edu [130.203.6.6]) by mail.cse.psu.edu (CSE Mail Server) with ESMTP id DE30219A1D; Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:16:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from pali.cps.cmich.edu (pali.cps.cmich.edu [141.209.131.81]) by mail.cse.psu.edu (CSE Mail Server) with ESMTP id 0BC4C19A12 for <9fans@cse.psu.edu>; Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:15:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (ishwar@localhost) by pali.cps.cmich.edu (8.11.4/8.11.3) with ESMTP id f6KJHB701588 for <9fans@cse.psu.edu>; Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:17:11 -0400 From: Ish Rattan To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: [9fans] Parallel computing and Plan9 Sender: 9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu Errors-To: 9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu X-BeenThere: 9fans@cse.psu.edu X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.5 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu List-Id: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans.cse.psu.edu> List-Archive: Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:17:10 -0400 (EDT) Hello: I have been thinking about parallel programming under Plan9. Traditional way to write parallel program is to partition the task into a number of subtasks and control their execution-scheduling and communication among a number of autonomous systems. In Plan9 case, the above scenario does not hold. The computations are done on a cpu-server. If there is only one cpu-server then the parallel programming is no different form non-parallel case (except for concurrency control). Say there are two cpu-servers in a system: 1) can one distribute the computation on these cpu-servers? 2) what about the interaction between the distributed computation parts? I did not find any technique for a program to discover the cpu-servers in the system too. Multithreading/light-weight processes in the same computation do help but is not strictly speaking 'shared memory' or 'message passing' communication based parallel programming. So how does Plan9 fit in the parallel programming paradigm that uses cpu cycles from different cpus to reduce the computation time? I would like your comments, as I plan to pursue/explore this issue Fall semester. -ishwar --upas-nofrqnuwourwjekyqskoasiyoj--