Adaptive cluster computing using JavaSpaces

We present the design, implementation and evaluation of a framework that uses JavaSpaces [1] to support this type of opportunistic adaptive parallel/distributed computing over networked clusters in a non-intrusive manner. The framework targets applications exhibiting coarse-grained parallelism and has three key features: (1) portability across heterogeneous platforms, (2) minimal configuration overheads for participating nodes, and (3) automated system state monitoring (using SNMP) to ensure nonintrusive behavior. Experimental results presented in this paper demonstrate that for applications that can be broken into coarse-grained, relatively independent tasks, the opportunistic adaptive parallel computing framework can provide performance gains. Furthermore, the results indicate that monitoring and reacting to the current system state minimizes the intrusiveness of the framework.