Improving the PVM teaching environment

Abstract

The parallel programming community has long recognized the need for a simple programming environment offering interprocess communication between heterogeneous systems. As the Parallel Virtual Machine environment, PVM, has emerged to meet this goal, an increasing number of educational institutions are choosing PVM to support their teaching of parallel and distributed computing using networks of workstations. However, it is often the nature of PVM's design and implementation that can severely limit its success in a teaching environment. This paper first motivates and then describes improvements to the PVM environment which increase both robustness and efficiency in an educational setting.