Combination of Java and asynchronism for the grid : a comparative study based on a parallel power method

Summary form only given. Nowadays, distributed computing over large networks is a popular and good alternative to dedicated parallel machines or clusters. Nevertheless, grid computing often suffers poor performances due to the heterogeneity of the machines and bottlenecks on the network. This is especially true for iterative computations when a lot of iterations are needed to converge to the problem solution. We evaluate Jace, a Java environment we have developed to easily implement and execute asynchronous iterations-asynchronous communications algorithms on the grid. Our evaluation is based on a typical iterative algorithm : the power method.