Carleton University
Technical Report TR-97-10
May 1997
TR-97-10: Performance of a Parallel Application on a Network of Workstations
Abstract
Performance of parallel applications on networks of workstations can be different from that on a parallel machine. Therefore, it is important to understand the factors that influence the performance of parallel applications on this type of systems. To gain this understanding, we study the performance of a matrix multiplication application on a NOW-based system that uses the PVM. We have used a network of heterogeneous workstations, which are connected by two networks—the standard Ethernet (10 Mbps) and the Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps). These two networks allow us to study the effect of network speed on the performance. We report the impact of various system and workload parameters, mapping, and load sharing algorithms on the performance of the matrix multiplication application.