Distributed and High Performance Computing (DHPC)

In addition to the DHPC material and links below, some recent (2011) projects in distributed computing include:

• Use of HTML5 and SQLLite and other Web persistence techniques for managing stateful web page transactions on various platforms including mobile tablet computers.
  
  
• Development of distributed software for mobile "apps" for both iPad and Androd tablets.
  
  
• Development of Cloud management apparatus for "Software as a Service" (SaaS.)

The material below is a cover page for the Distributed and High Performance Computing (DHPC) research group at the Institute of Information and Mathematical Science (IIMS) at Massey university in New Zealand. The main DHPC web site is at the University of Adelaide in South Australia.

DHPC started in Adelaide University in 1996 and was led there until 2000 by Ken Hawick. In 2000 Ken left to head up the new Computer Science Division at the University of Wales, Bangor in the UK. Paul Coddington took over the Adelaide part of DHPC and the group continued as an international collaboration between Ken and Heath James in Wales, and Paul in Australia. In 2003 Ken and Heath left Wales to join Massey University in New Zealand. In 2007 Heath left Academia to work for the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO). Paul continues to direct DHPC at Adelaide.

Research on parallel computing continues at Massey through the Centre for Parallel Computing and also the high performance simulations work of the Complex Systems and Simulations research group. This latter, includes work on accelerator processing devices such as GPGPUs. A preprint of a recent paper, to appear in the Journal: Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience appears as Massey Technical Note CSTN-065.

The DHPC group at Adelaide was started to investigate metacomputing or computational grid systems, and cluster computing, but later diversified into distributed middleware. Some of DHPC's most noted projects are:

• The DISCWorld Project - a middleware research exploration and prototyping project.
  
  
• The On Line Data Archives Project - an early data grids project.
  
  
• The Distributed Geographic Information Systems Project - grids of geographic data - see also our journal article in Parallel Computing Vol 10, PP1297 (2003) , describing this work.
  
  
• Grids page simulating Distributed Computational Grids.

Another important area of DHPC work was in cluster computing. Ken rescued 8 486 PCs from a junk shop to build our first Beowulf cluster system in 1996 and the data and student activity we generated from that launched collaborations with Physics, Chemistry and Geography departments. Our interests in cluster systems continued at Bangor and here at Massey in New Zealand.

Computer Science is notorious for recycling ideas after long cycles - the current (2009 onwards) interest in cloud computing was foreshadowed by many of the metacomputing ideas of the late 1990s. The DHPC DISCWorld project was essentially a cloud computing management software infrastructure. An idea before its time described in DHPC Technical note DHPC-042 - a preprint of an article in the Journal: Future Generation Computer Systems in 1998.

The definitive DHPC web pages are in Adelaide at: www.dhpc.adelaide.edu.au and in particular the DHPC Technical reports are stored there. As a rough historical Guide Tech Notes 1-70 were written when Ken and Heath were at Adelaide, 71-128 during the Bangor period. See also our new series of technical notes in computational science.

Cached Copies of DHPC Technical Reports

The Adelaide DHPC Web site is increasingly offline and unavailable. Reprints (PDF) are available from the cached list below:

DHPC-128: Tuple-Space Based Middleware for Distributed Computing

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James and L.G. Pritchard

DHPC-126: Middleware Issues for Mobile Business and Commerce

K.A. Hawick nd H.A. James

DHPC-125: Integrating E-Activities with Wide Area Management Information Systems

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-124: Distributed Java Support for Mobile Applications on Lightweight Devices

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-123: Software Architecture and Programming Issues for Distributed Robots

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James and R.G. Shepherd and J.E. Story

DHPC-121: An Architecture for Swarm Robots

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James and J.E. Story and R.G. Shepherd

DHPC-120: Reconfigurable Systems and Long Running Objects

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-119: Simulating Resource and Service Trading in Grid Systems

H.A. James and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-118: Simulating Swarm Behaviour of Robots

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-116: Middleware for Context Sensitive Mobile Applications

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-113: Personal Communications and Mobile Decision Support

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-112: Middleware for Wireless Sensors and Robots

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-111: Wireless Issues for a Mobility Management Middleware

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-108: Distributed Frameworks and Parallel Algorithms for Processing Large-Scale Geographic Data

K.A. Hawick and P.D. Coddington and H.A. James

DHPC-103: Dynamic Cluster Conguration and Management using JavaSpaces

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-102: Modeling A Gossip Protocol for Resource Discovery in Distributed Systems

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-101: Reconfigurable Scheduling of Long Running Objects

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-091: An Environment for Workflow Applications on Wide-Area Distributed Systems

H.A. James and K.A. Hawick and P.D. Coddington

DHPC-090: A Reconfigurable Component-basedProblem Solving Environment

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James and P.D. Coddington

DHPC-087: A Testbed System For Time Warp in Java

M.C. Lowry and P.J. Ashenden and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-085: Flexible High-Performance Access to Distributed Storage Resources

C.J. Patten and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-083: Data Futures in DISCWorld

H.A. James and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-081: A Java-based Parallel Programming Support Environment

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-079: Asynchronous Transfer Mode and other Network Technologies for Wide-Area and High-Performance Cluster Computing

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-077: Java Tools and Technologies for Cluster Computing

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James and J.A. Mathew and P.D. Coddington

DHPC-073: Commodity Cluster Computing for Computational Chemistry

K.A. Hawick and D.A. Grove and P.D. Coddington and M.A. Buntine

DHPC-071: Interfacing to On-line Geospatial Imagery Archives

P.D. Coddington and M.W. Grigg and S.J. del Fabbro and K.A. Hawick and S.P. James and E.H.S. Lo and A.K. Lui and K.D. Mason and M.J. Owen

DHPC-066: Scheduling Independent Tasks on Metacomputing Systems

H.A. James and K.A. Hawick and P.D. Coddington

DHPC-065: Cluster Computing with iMacs and Power Macintoshes

D.A. Grove and P.D. Coddington and K.A. Hawick and F.A. Vaughan

DHPC-064: Remote Application Scheduling on Metacomputing Systems

H.A. James and K.A Hawick

DHPC-063: Analysis and Development of Java Grande Benchmarks

J. A. Mathew and P.D. Coddington and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-062: Distributed and Hierarchical Storage Systems

C.J. Patten and K.A. Hawick and J.F. Hercus and A.L. Brown

DHPC-061: Beowulf – A New Hope for Parallel Computing?

K.A. Hawick and D.A. Grove and F.A. Vaughan

DHPC-060: Remote Data Access in Distributed Object-Oriented Middleware

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James and J.A. Mathew

DHPC-059: Interfaces and Implementations of Random Number Generators for Java Grande Applications

P.D. Coddington and J.A. Mathew and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-058: Towards a Scalable Metacomputing Storage Service

C.J. Patten and K.A. Hawick and J.F. Hercus

DHPC-050: Interfacing to Distributed Active Data Archives

K.A. Hawick and P.D. Coddington

DHPC-049: Inter Server Transport of Java Byte Code in a Metacomputing Environment

J.A. Mathew and A.J. Silis and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-047: Implementation of a Geospatial Imagery Digital Library using Java and CORBA

P.D. Coddington and K.A. Hawick and K.E. Kerry and J.A. Mathew and A.J. Silis and D.L. Webb and P.J. Whitbread and C.G. Irving and M.W. Grigg and R. Jana and K. Tang

DHPC-046: Managing Online Data Archives with the DISCWorld Metacomputing Environment

K.A. Hawick

DHPC-042: DISCWorld: An Environment for Service-Based Metacomputing

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James and A.J. Silis and D.A. Grove and C.J. Patten and J.A. Mathew and P.D. Coddington and K.E. Kerry and J.F. Hercus and F.A. Vaughan

DHPC-041: Authenticated Transmission of Discoverable Portable Code Objects in a Distributed Computing Environment

D.A. Grove and A.J. Silis and J.A. Mathew and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-038: Service Scheduling on Wide-Area Metacomputer Clusters

K.A. Hawick and P.D. Coddington and H.A. James

DHPC-037: Web-Based Access to Distributed High-Performance Geographic Information Systems for Decision Support

P.D. Coddington and K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-035: Kriging Interpolation on High-Performance Computers

K.E. Kerry and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-034: Java as a Front-End to High-Performance Computing Resources

A.J. Silis and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-033: Service Management in DISCWorld using CORBA and Java

K.E. Kerry and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-032: DWorFS: File System Support for Legacy Applications in DISCWorld

C.J. Patten and F.A. Vaughan and K.A. Hawick and A.L. Brown

DHPC-030: Querying and Auxiliary Data in the DISCWorld

J.A. Mathew and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-029: Compression of Image Data and Performance Tradeoffs for Client/Server Systems

J.F. Hercus and K.A Hawick

DHPC-028: The DISCWorld Peer-To-Peer Architecture

Andrew Silis and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-027: DISCWorld: An Integrated Data Environment for Distributed High-Performance Computing

K.A. Hawick, A. L. Brown, P.D.Coddington, J.F. Hercus, H.A. James, K.E. Kerry, K.J. Maciunas, J.A. Mathew, C.J. Patten, A.J. Silis, F.A. Vaughan

DHPC-026: Resource Descriptions for Job Scheduling in DISCWorld

H.A. James and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-021: On-Line Data Archives

K.A. Hawick nd P.D. Coddington and H.A. James and C.J. Patten

DHPC-020: DISCWorld: A Distributed High Performance Computing Environment

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James and C.J. Patten and F.A. Vaughan

DHPC-018: A Web-based Interface for On-Demand Processing of Satellite Imagery Archives

H.A. James and K.A Hawick

DHPC-017: World Wide Web Server Technology and Interfaces for Distributed, High-Performance Computing Systems

A.J.Silis and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-016: Applying ATM to Distributed and High Performance Computing on Local and Wide Area Networks

J.A. Mathew and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-015: Spatial Interpolation on Distributed, High-Performance Computers

K.E. Kerry and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-010: Stencil Methods on Distributed High Performance Computers

H.A. James, C.J. Patten and K.A Hawick

DHPC-009: Distributed High-Performance Computation for Remote Sensing

K.A. Hawick and H.A. James

DHPC-008: Eric: A User and Applications Interface to a Distributed Satellite Data Repository

H.A. James and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-006: Trends in High Performance Computing

K.A. Hawick

DHPC-005: Evaluation of High Performance Fortran through Application Kernels

H. W. Yau and G.C. Fox and K.A. Hawick

DHPC-004: Geostationary-Satellite Imagery Applications on Distributed, High-Performance Computing

K.A. Hawick, H.A. James, K.J. Maciunas, F.A. Vaughan, A.L. Wendelborn, M. Buchhorn, M. Rezny, S.R. Taylor and M.D. Wilson

DHPC-003: Geographic Information Systems Applications on an ATM-Based Distributed High Performance Computing System

K.A. Hawick, H.A. James, K.J. Maciunas, F.A. Vaughan, A.L. Wendelborn, M. Buchhorn, M. Rezny, S.R. Taylor and M.D. Wilson

DHPC-002: An ATM-based Distributed High Performance Computing System

K.A. Hawick, H.A. James, K.J. Maciunas, F.A. Vaughan, A.L. Wendelborn, M. Buchhorn, M. Rezny, S.R. Taylor and M.D. Wilson

DHPC-001: Distributed Geographic Information Systems Project Concepts Discussion Document

DHPC Project Team