DATAEXCHANGE - HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMMUNICATIONS IN DISTRIBUTED LABORATORIES

Current communications tools and libraries for high performance comput ing are designed for platforms and applications that exhibit relativel y stable computational and communication characteristics. In contrast, the demands of (1) mixed environments in which high performance appli cations interact with multiple end users, visualizations, storage engi nes, and I/O engines - termed 'distributed laboratories' in our resear ch - and (2) high performance collaborative computing applications in general, exhibit additional complexities in terms of dynamic behaviors . This paper explores the communication requirements of distributed la boratories, and it describes the DataExchange communication infrastruc ture supporting high performance interactive and collaborative applica tions. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.