HARNESS: a next generation distributed virtual machine

Heterogeneous Adaptable Reconfigurable Networked SystemS (HARNESS) is an ex perimental metacomputing system [L. Smarr, C.E. Catlett, Communications of the ACM 35 (6) (1992) 45-52] built around the services of a highly customiz able and reconfigurable Distributed Virtual Machine (DVM). The successful e xperience of the HARNESS design team with the Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM ) project has taught us both the features which make the DVM model so valua ble to parallel programmers and the limitations imposed by the PVM design. HARNESS seeks to remove some of those limitations by taking a totally diffe rent approach to creating and modifying a DVM. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved.