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Utilizing commodity hardware and software to distribute a real‐world application: maximizing reuse while improving performance
Author(s) -
Davis Michael,
Smith Randy,
Dixon Brandon,
Parrish Allen,
Cordes David
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.651
Subject(s) - computer science , reuse , commodity , flexibility (engineering) , software , node (physics) , distributed computing , code (set theory) , operating system , engineering , statistics , mathematics , structural engineering , economics , market economy , waste management , programming language , set (abstract data type)
Commodity computing hardware continues to increase performance while decreasing price. This combination is driving a renewed interest in parallel and distributed computing. In this study, we examine the performance of an existing application in a ten‐node computing cluster using commodity off‐the‐shelf components. The application is a statistical analysis software package that processes categorical data used by state public safety programs. The study examines various network topologies and focuses on minimizing the software modifications required to distribute the application. We conclude that parallel computing using commodity components is an effective mechanism to increase the performance of real‐world applications especially when the underlying application architectures have the flexibility to support efficient reuse of the existing code. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.