rfinch@caldwr.UUCP (Ralph Finch) (11/22/89)
We are trying to parallelize 2 large Fortran programs we have by running parts of them simultaneously on Sparc machines in our net. I'd like to use RPC, but don't have the time nor expertise to write the C code to access RPC and make the interface between Fortran and C. Thus, I'm looking for a commercial or PD package which would do much of the work...I've heard that there is a package called VPX which does this...anyone hear of it, or any similar package? P.S. Apollo's NCS doesn't run on Sparc machines, or I would use that. Many thanks, -- Ralph Finch The opinions expressed herein are mine... ...ucbvax!ucdavis!caldwr!rfinch
rfinch@caldwr.UUCP (Ralph Finch) (12/03/89)
David Forslund (dwf@lanl.gov) suggested I try ISIS, available via ftp from cornell.arpa. I downloaded this and am quite impressed. It seems much easier to use than rpc, more capable, and can be called from Fortran, a big plus for me. It is discussed in the group comp.sys.isis. I enclose a brief description of it here (description excerpted from a message by ken@cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman), 9 June 88). This is to announce the availability of a public distribution of the ISIS System, a toolkit for distributed and fault-tolerant programming. The initial version of ISIS runs on UNIX on SUN, DEC, GOULD, and HP systems, although ports to other UNIX-like systems are planned for the future. No kernel changes are needed to support ISIS; you just roll it in and should be able to use it immediately. The current implementation of ISIS performs well in networks of up to about 100-200 sites. --- Who might find ISIS useful? --- You will find ISIS useful if you are interested in developing relatively sophisticated distributed programs under UNIX (eventu- ally, other systems too). These include programs that distribute computations over multiple processes, need fault-tolerance, coor- dinate activities underway at several places in a network, recover automatically from software and hardware crashes, and/or dynamically reconfigure while maintaining some sort of distri- buted correctness constraint at all times. ISIS is also useful in building certain types of distributed real time systems. -- Ralph Finch The opinions expressed herein are mine... ...ucbvax!ucdavis!caldwr!rfinch