The PaCMAn Metacomputer: parallel computing with Java mobile agents

The PaCMAn (parallel computing with Java mobile agents) Metacomputer launch es multiple Java mobile agents that communicate and cooperate to solve prob lems in parallel. Each mobile agent can travel anywhere in the Web to perfo rm its tasks. A number of brokers/load forecasters keep track of the availa ble resources and provide load forecast to the clients. The clients select the servers that they will utilize based on the specific resource requireme nts and the load forecast. The PaCMAn mobile agents are modular, the mobile shell is separated from the specific task code of the target application. To this end, we introduce the concept of TaskHandlers which are Java object s capable of implementing a particular task of the target application. Task Handlers are dynamically assigned to PaCMAn's mobile agents. We have develo ped and tested a prototype system with several applications such as paralle l Web querying, a prime number generator, the trapezoidal rule and the RC5 cracking application. Our results demonstrate that PaCMAn provide very good parallel efficiency, (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.