Heterogeneous networks of workstations and SPMD scientific computing

Workstation clusters are considered as having the best cost/peformance ratio for parallel computing. In particular, SPMD (Single Program-Multiple Data) scientific computing is a good candidate to take advantage of these parallel (virtual) computers. Hardware (CPU, cache memory, etc.) and software (operating systems) heterogeneity is one of the main drawbacks for network computing. In this paper, the matrix multiplication benchmark is taken as representative from SPDM scientific computing. The paper considers how the performance of this simple benchmark is affected by the heterogeneity not only in a LAN but also in different LANs connected via TCP-UDP/IP. Both LANs are already interconnected for Internet traffic.