Author(s)

P. –W. Chen & H. –C. Lee

Abstract

In this study, an agent-based distributed parallel processing virtual machine called C’AS is proposed. It is built on a PC cluster with the popular Linux operating system. The proposed system is accessible and executable \“anytime, anywhere,” through standard Web browsers. The agents work on cluster machines to monitor CPU usages and report loads of the corresponding machines to the server. The server dispatches a given job to the appropriate machine according to the performance index and the load of each machine. The job- dispatching algorithm tries to allocate jobs dynamically so that they can be finished in the shortest time possible. The promising experimental results have demonstrated the feasibility and usefulness of the proposed system. 1 Introduction PCs and their peripherals are probably the most rapid-growing industries in the world during the last few decades. The computing power of personal computers has been almost as fast as what you could ever find in high-performance workstations. In recent years, due to the demands for Internet services, computer network technologies have their fastest progresses ever in history. Faster CPUs and better bandwidth has made high performance computing more practical in real-life, especially due to the availability of low-cost computing resources and high-speed computer networks. As the performance of commodity computer and network hardware increase, and their prices decrease, it becomes more and more practical to build parallel computational systems from off-the-shelf components, rather than buying CPU time on very expensive workstations or supercomputers [I]. Parallel processing

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