Taskers and General Resource Managers: PVM Supporting DCE Process Management

We discuss the use of PVM as a system that supports General Process Management for DCEs. This system allows PVM to initialise MPI and other meta-computing systems. The impetus for such a system has come from the PVMPI project which required complex taskers and resource managers to be constructed. Such development is normally too time consuming for PVM users, due to the in-depth knowledge of PVM's internals, which are required to facilitate such systems correctly and reliably. This project examines contemporary systems such as various MPIRUN systems and other general schedulers, and compares their requirements to the capabilities of the current PVM system. Current PVM internal operations are explained, and an experimental system based on the experience gained from the PVMPI project is demonstrated. Performance of some standardised plug-in allocation schemes that will be distributed with the new PVM 3.4 release are then demonstrated. It is hoped that this project will provide users of dynamic meta-computing environments the \user controlled" exibility that has previously been di cult to achieve without the user having to rely upon external third party scheduler and job control systems.