Design of efficient Java communications for high performance computing

Abstract

[Abstract] There is an increasing interest to adopt Java as the parallel programming language for the multi-core era. Although Java offers important advantages, such as built-in multithreading and networking support, productivity and portability, the lack of efficient communication middleware is an important drawback for its uptake in High Performance Computing (HPC). This PhD Thesis presents the design, implementation and evaluation of several solutions to improve this situation: (1) a high performance Java sockets implementation (JFS, Java Fast Sockets) on high-speed networks (e.g., Myrinet, InfiniBand) and shared memory (e.g., multi-core) machines; (2) a low-level messaging device, iodev, which efficiently overlaps communication and computation; and (3) a more scalable Java message-passing library, Fast MPJ (F-MPJ). Furthermore, new Java parallel benchmarks have been implemented and used for the performance evaluation of the developed middleware. The final and main conclusion is that the use of Java for HPC is feasible and even advisable when looking for productive development, provided that efficient communication middleware is made available, such as the projects presented in this Thesis.

[Resumen] La tesis doctoral "Design of Efficient Java Communications for High Performance Computing" parte de la hipótesis inicial de que es posible desarrollar aplicaciones Java en computación de altas prestaciones, un ámbito en el que el rendimiento es crucial, siempre que esté disponible un middleware de comunicación eficiente. Así, se han diseñado, desarrollado y evaluado diferentes bibliotecas de comunicación en Java, desde el nivel de sockets al de paso de mensajes, obteniendo notables incrementos de eficiencia, confirmando que la hipótesis inicial es factible.