Improving Binomial Trees for Broadcasting in Local Networks of Workstations1

NOWs (Networks of workstations) have been extensively used to execute parallel applications. Although NOWs seem to be an easy and inexpensive way of obtaining great performance, it may not always be so. When using such an environment for executing a parallel application, performance may not be as good as expected due to delays in communication. Also, the heterogeneity in communication makes it hard to take advantage, or reuse, communication strategies that were useful in regular-topology platforms, e.g., parallel machines or LAN-based clusters of workstations. For instance, broadcasting in a NOW may be more challenging due to the variety of communication links and, consequently, of point-to-point latencies. In this paper, we present a strategy to improve broadcast algorithms that are based on binomial trees, which are used in regular-topology platforms, so that they can execute efficiently in Local NOWs.