A remote process creation and execution facility supporting parallel execution on distributed systems

The parallel execution of processes over a distributed system is an objective, that, if realised, will provide access to a wealth of computational resources currently underutilised in many network environments. What is lacking from current distributed systems is a flexible and user friendly facility for the creation of processes across a network of workstations in a transparent and easily controlled manner. The paper presents an original architecture of a remote process creation and execution facility designed and developed as part of a microkernel and client-server based distributed operating system. The most important feature of this facility is that it coordinates the cooperation of other kernel servers to create (locally or remotely) a process. It was demonstrated that this facility is very fast and, thus can be used efficiently to support parallel execution on a network of workstations.