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GENESIS: an efficient, transparent and easy to use cluster operating system

Version 2 2024-06-16, 13:38
Version 1 2014-10-27, 16:26
journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-16, 13:38 authored by Andrzej GoscinskiAndrzej Goscinski, Michael HobbsMichael Hobbs, J Silcock
Present operating systems are not built to support parallel computing––they do not provide services to manage parallelism, i.e., to globally manage parallel processes and computational resources. The cluster operating environments that are used to assist the execution of parallel applications do not provide support for both programming paradigms, message passing (MP) or distributed shared memory (DSM)––they are mainly offered as separate components implemented at the user level as library and independent server processes. Due to poor operating systems users must deal with clusters as a set of independent computers rather than to see this cluster as a single powerful computer. A single system image (SSI) of the cluster is not offered to users. There is a need for an operating system for clusters. We claim and demonstrate in this paper that it is possible to develop a cluster operating system that is able to efficiently manage parallelism; use cluster resources efficiently; support MP in the form of standard MP and PVM, and DSM; offer SSI; and make it easy to use. We show that to achieve these aims this operating system should inherit many features of a distributed operating system and provide new services which address the needs of parallel processes, cluster's resources, and application developers. In order to substantiate the claim the first version of a cluster operating system managing parallelism and offering SSI, called GENESIS, has been developed.

History

Journal

Parallel computing

Volume

28

Pagination

557-606

Location

Amsterdam, Netherlands

ISSN

0167-8191

eISSN

1872-7336

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2002, Elsevier Science BV

Issue

4

Publisher

Elsevier Science BV