A Parallel Corba Component Model for Numerical Code Coupling

Abstract

The fast growth of high bandwidth wide area networks has allowed the building of computational grids, which are constituted of PC clusters and/or parallel machines. Computational grids enable the design of new numerical simulation applications. For example, it is now feasible to couple several scientific codes to obtain a multi-physic application. In order to handle the complexity of such aplications, software component technology appears very appealing. However, most current software component models do not provide any support to transparently and efficiently embed parallel codes into components. This paper deals with GridCCM, an extension to the CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) Component Model to support parallel components. The feasibility of the model is evaluated thanks to its implementation on top of two CCM prototypes. Preliminary performance results are very good; there is no significant overhead while aggregating the network bandwidth capability of a parallel component.