PVM communication performance in a switched FDDI heterogeneous distributed computing environment

The Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) message passing system developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratories has gained widespread acceptance and usage in the parallel programming community. The authors describe the results of performance tests of PVM in a switched FDDI heterogeneous distributed computing environment. They aim to provide insight into how parallel programs, particularly those employing PVM for intertask communication, will perform in distributed systems of the future.