A Portable Multicomputer Communication Library atop the Reactive Kernel

Abstract

Sophisticated multicomputer applications require efficient, flexible, convenient underlying communication primitives. In the work described here, Zipcode, a new, portable communication library, has been designed, developed, articulated and evaluated. The primary goals were: high efficiency compared to lowest-level primitives, user-definable message receipt selectivity, as well as abstraction of collections of processes and message selectivity to allow multiple, independently conceived libraries to work together without conflict. Zipcode works atop the Caltech Reactive Kernel, a portable, minimalistic multicomputer node operating system. Presently, the Reactive Kernel is implemented for Intel iPSC/1, iPSC/2, and Symult s2010 multicomputers and emulated on shared-memory computers as well as networks of Sun workstations. Consequently, Zipcode addresses an equally wide audience, and can plausibly be run in other environments.