Nimrod (distributed computing)
Nimrod is a tool for the parameterisation of serial programs to create and execute embarassingly parallel programs over a computational grid. Nimrod was one of the first tools to make use of heterogeneous resources in a grid for a single computation (Abramson et al. 1997). It was also an early example of using a market economy to perform grid scheduling (Abramson et al. 2000). This enables Nimrod to provide a guaranteed completion time despite using best-effort services (Buyya et al. 2000).
The tool was created as a research project funded by the Distributed Systems Technology Centre. The principal investigator is Professor David Abramson of Monash University.
A commercial product based on Nimrod called EnFuzion is available from Axceleon.
References
- D. Abramson, I. Foster, J. Giddy, A. Lewis, R. Sosic, R. Sutherst, N. White, The Nimrod Computational Workbench: A Case Study in Desktop Metacomputing, Australian Computer Science Conference (ACSC 97), Macquarie University, Sydney, Feb 1997.
- Abramson, D., Giddy, J. and Kotler, L. High Performance Parametric Modeling with Nimrod/G: Killer Application for the Global Grid?, International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), pp 520-528, Cancun, Mexico, May 2000.
- Buyya, R., Abramson, D. and Giddy, J. Nimrod/G: An Architecture of a Resource Management and Scheduling System in a Global Computational Grid, HPC Asia 2000, May 14-17, 2000, pp 283 289, Beijing, China.