Quasi-asynchronous migration: a novel migration protocol for PVM tasks

ABSTRACT

Process migration is a desirable and useful facility for the Network of Workstations (NOW). This paper presents a novel migration protocol called quasi-asynchronous migration for PVM tasks, which allows non-migrating tasks to execute during most of the time of migration. Message flushing and message delaying are the key mechanisms used in quasi-asynchronous migration. Because the protocol is implemented on top of PVM and at user-level, it is both transparent to users and portable. Both the analysis of the migration protocol and the experimental results show that quasi-asynchronous migration has lower overhead than other migration protocols.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.5 COMPUTER SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.1 Process Management
          Subjects: Synchronization

General Terms:
Design, Measurement, Performance, Standardization, Theory

Keywords:
Network of Workstations (NOW), PVM, process migration