Single System Image: Need, Approaches, and Supporting
HPC Systems
Abstract:
High performance computing on proprietary or commodity hardware is
gaining wide acceptance. For this to be practicable, it is important that
systems provide a single system image at any one (or more) of the following
levels: Hardware, Operating System, Message Passing Interfaces, Language/Compiler,
or Tools. Single-system image greatly enhances the programs portability
and at the same time increases the availability of a wide range of software
(tools or applications). An operating system can exhibit single-system
image by supporting a parallel file system, parallel commands, multi-user
and multithreaded kernel for single/multi-user machine. The operating system
should incorporate all these features without additional primitives or
commands but having the same existing formats. This paper presents the
needs and approaches for building a single system image, and a survey of
systems supporting single-system image.
Keywords: Network, Parallel, Distributed, NOW, COW, Operating
Systems, Single System Image
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Appreared in: The International Conference on Parallel and Distributed
Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'97); June 30 - July 3, 1997;
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.