Porting PVM to New Architectures
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PVM has been ported to three distinct classes of architecture:
Each of these classes requires a different approach to make PVM
exploit the capabilities of the respective architecture.
The workstations use TCP/IP to move data between hosts,
the distributed-memory multiprocessors use the native
message-passing routines to move data between nodes,
and the shared-memory multiprocessors use shared memory to
move data between the processors.
The following sections describe the steps for porting the
PVM source to each of these classes.
- Workstations and PCs running some version of Unix
- Distributed-memory multiprocessors like the Intel hypercubes
- Shared-memory multiprocessors like the SGI Challenge
Porting PVM to non-Unix
operating systems can be very difficult.
Nonetheless, groups outside the PVM team have developed PVM ports for
DEC's VMS and IBM's OS/2
Such ports can require extensive rewriting of the source and are not