Virtual shared files: Towards user-friendly inter-process communications

Abstract

This paper presents conception of virtual shared files (VSF) as paradigm of parallel components interaction. Metaphor of virtual shared files space ensures a compromise between flexibility of explicit message passing and transparency of shared memory model. VSF are based on ordinary I/O notion and look like matrixes and ordinary files for application programmers. The most essential design issues are: all operations are applied to a file as a whole; operations remotely changing the content of file are prohibited; memory is explicitly allocated by user what is essential for massively-parallel computers.