Chapter 17. Project: The Not Too Parallel Virtual Machine

PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) provides a high-level, but not transparent, system for a user to coordinate tasks spread across workstations on a network. This project describes a threaded implementation of the Not Too Parallel Virtual Machine (NTPVM) dispatcher, a simplified PVM system. The multithreaded implementation illustrates the interaction between threads and fork, providing a semirealistic application in which to explore complex thread interactions.

Objectives

• Learn about distributed processing

• Experiment with threads and I/O

• Explore the interaction of threads with fork

• Use threads to solve a real problem

• Understand the use of objects in thread design