LiPS : a system for distributed processing on workstations

Abstract

sc LiPS (sc Library for sc Parallel sc Systems) is a collection of C functions enabling a programmer to distribute applications with low communication granularity over a network of UNIX workstations. sc LiPS restricts its applications to the use of idle time. As the potential computing power, arising from wasted time slices (idle-time) of workstations, often overwhelms even the power of supercomputers, sc LiPS is a cheap alternative to solve computing intensive problems. Based on UNIX, using socket communication primitives sc LiPS was developed on a network of workstations running the UNIX Operating system. The present release (2.1) is used at the Department of Computer Science at the University of the Saarland. With about 150 machines we reach a total computing power of about 2500 MIPS. ,