Javelin: Parallel computing on the internet

Java offers the basic infrastructure needed to integrate computers connected to the Internet into a seamless distributed computational resource: an infrastructure for running coarse-grained parallel applications on numerous, anonymous machines. First, we sketch such a resource’s essential technical properties. Then, we present a prototype of Javelin, an infrastructure for global computing. The system is based on Internet software that is interoperable, increasingly secure, and ubiquitous: Java-enabled Web technology. Ease of participation is seen as a key property for such a resource to realize the vision of a multiprocessing environment comprising thousands of computers. Javelin’s architecture and implementation require participants to have access to only a Java-enabled Web browser. Experimental results are given in the form of a Mersenne Prime application and a ray-tracing application that run on a heterogeneous network of several parallel machines, workstations, and PCs. Two key areas of current research, fault-tolerance and scalability, are subsequently explored briefly.