Distributed computing on an FDDI based network

The authors study the performance of FDDI (fiber distributed data interface) as a backplane network connecting SUN4 workstations in a distributed environment. They used the C language and the Express software package, developed by Parasoft Inc., to build a distributed system and to develop distributed applications. The performance of fast Fourier transforms is studied for different problem sizes and numbers of workstations. The results are compared to those obtained on a stand-alone workstation and on Ethernet. Results confirm that FDDI can offer considerable speed-up compared to a stand-alone workstations and meets the bandwidth requirements for distributed computing across local area networks.<>