Parallel processing in a logical area network: a case study

A distributed algorithm for the generation of Mandelbrot-set images has been developed for a network computing environment consisting of a network of workstations connected via a local area network. To investigate the performance gains offered by the use of multiple workstations, a parallel implementation is implemented to run on ten ULTRIX-based VAXstations connected with a Thinwire Ethernet LAN (local area network). The socket communication facilities available in ULTRIX greatly simplify the task of remotely executing processes and creating network connections. The parallel implementation achieved speedups of up to 4.46 over the serial algorithm. It is shown that very good performance can be achieved by using a network of workstations to execute large-grain problems in parallel.<>