A Software Framework to Support Adaptive Applications in Distributed/Parallel Computing

Resource allocations are performed statically for traditional distributed/parallel applications prior to launching application executions. This limitation could cause long resource waiting time when multiple resources need to be co-allocated. In contrast, the Adaptive Distributed/Parallel Applications (ADA), allowing resources to be added and released during executions, can adapt to the dynamic feature of common distributed computing environments (e.g. the Grid). The goal of the work is to create a tool to allow users to easily develop and run ADAs without dealing with the underneath distributed resource environments. We introduce a novel software package, Application Agent (AA), to support the execution of ADAs, including automatic resource allocation, dynamic process deployment, and enabling process wide-area communication. An AA-enabled application can be started on any internet-connected machines and the AA will dynamically configure a virtual machine from the local machine to remote available machines to satisfy the execution. The AA is composed of two parts. The first part is a library of AA interface routines, which contains user-callable functions for developers to integrate their applications with the AA. This second part is the daemons, which dynamically collect computational resources on the Internet to create a wide-area virtual machine to execute an application.