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PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine)

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing

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Synonyms

Message passing

Definition

Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) is a software package that permits a heterogeneous collection of Unix and/or Windows computers hooked together by a network to be used as a single large parallel computer. Thus large computational problems can be solved more cost-effectively by using the aggregate power and memory of many computers. The software is very robust and portable. The source, which is available free from the PVM website, has been compiled on everything from laptops to CRAYs. Because PVM supports fault tolerance and dynamic adaptability, hundreds of sites around the world continue using PVM to solve important scientific, industrial, and medical problems. PVM has also been popular as an educational tool to teach parallel programming because of its simple intuitive user interface.

Discussion

Introduction

PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is often lumped together with the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard, because PVM was the precursor to MPI...

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Bibliography

  1. Bjornson R, Carriero N, Gelernter D, Leichter J (January 1988) Linda, the portable parallel. Research Report Yale/DCS/RR-520

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  2. Geist A, Beguelin A, Dongarra J, Jiang W, Manchek R, Sunderam V (1994) PVM: parallel virtual machine. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

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  3. Snir M, Otto S, Huss-Lederman S, Walker D, Dongarra J (1996) MPI: the complete reference. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Research Group, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, 37831, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Al Geist

Authors
  1. Al Geist
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    David Padua

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© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Geist, A. (2011). PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine). In: Padua, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09766-4_455

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