HPCC as high performance commodity computing on top of integrated Java, CORBA, COM and Web standards

Abstract

We review the growing power and capability of commodity computing and communication technologies largely driven by commercial distributed information systems. These systems are built from CORBA, Microsoft's COM, JavaBeans, and rapidly advancing Web approaches. One can abstract these to a three-tier model with largely independent chents connected to a distributed network of servers. The latter host various services including object and relational databases and of course parallel and sequential computing. High performance can be obtained by combining concurrency at the middle server tier with optimized parallel back end services. The resultant system combines the needed performance for large-scale HPCC apphcations with the rich functioneility of commodity systems. Further the architecture with distinct interface, server and specialized service implementation layers, naturally allows advances in each area to be easily incorporated. We illustrate how performance can be obtained within a commodity architecture and we propose a middleware integration approach based on JWORB (Java Web Object Broker) multi-protocol server technology. Examples are given from collaborative systems, support of multidisciplinary interactions, proposed visual HPCC ComponentWare, quantum Monte Carlo and distributed interactive simulations.