DHPC Adelaide

DHPC Technical Report DHPC-034

Java as a Front-End to High-Performance Computing Resources

Andrew Silis and K.A.Hawick

Archived: 22 February 1998

Published in Proc. Int. Conf. on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'98), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 13-16 July 1998.

Abstract

The Java programming language is finding uses in many areas of computing, and although Java Virtual Machines are becoming faster and more efficient, their performance is still poor compared to native code. In particular, numerical operations are still beter suited to be run using languages such as Fortran or C on high performance hardware. We describe our efforts in using Java as a front-end or client program for high-performance systems and in for particular parallel supercomputers running remote native code. We review various approaches to providing powerful back-end compute services to Java client programs and report on some performance figures and discuss their implications for performance accelerated Java programs in the context of a simple performance model. We also consider other non-technical, operational issues in setting up such a system to make use of legacy supercomputers.

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