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Farming out : a study.

Day, Warren Godfrey (1996) Farming out : a study. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent. (doi:10.22024/UniKent/01.02.94300) (KAR id:94300)

Abstract

Farming is one of severals ways of arranging for a group of individuals to perform work simultaneously. Farming is attractive. It is a simple concept, and yet it allocates work dynamically, balancing the load automatically. This gives rise to potentially great efficiency; yet the range of applications that can be farmed efficiently and which implementation strategies are the most effective has not been classified.

This research has investigated the types of application, design and implementation that farm efficiently on computer systems constructed from a network of communicating parallel processors. This research shows that all applications can be farmed and identifies those concerns that dictate efficiency. For the first generation of transputer hardware, extensive experiments have been performed using Occam, independent of any specific application. This study identified the boundary conditions that dictate which design parameters farm efficiently. These boundary conditions are expressed in a general form that is directly amenable to other architectures. The specific quantitative results are of direct use to others who wish to implement farms on this architecture.

Because of farming’s simplicity and potential for high efficiency, this work concludes that architects of parallel hardware should consider binding this paradigm into future systems so as to enable the dynamic allocation of processes to processors to take place automatically. As well as resulting in high levels of machine utilisation for all programs, this would also permanently remove the burden of allocation from the programmer.

Item Type: Thesis (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD))
DOI/Identification number: 10.22024/UniKent/01.02.94300
Additional information: This thesis has been digitised by EThOS, the British Library digitisation service, for purposes of preservation and dissemination. It was uploaded to KAR on 25 April 2022 in order to hold its content and record within University of Kent systems. It is available Open Access using a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial, No Derivatives (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) licence so that the thesis and its author, can benefit from opportunities for increased readership and citation. This was done in line with University of Kent policies (https://www.kent.ac.uk/is/strategy/docs/Kent%20Open%20Access%20policy.pdf). If you feel that your rights are compromised by open access to this thesis, or if you would like more information about its availability, please contact us at ResearchSupport@kent.ac.uk and we will seriously consider your claim under the terms of our Take-Down Policy (https://www.kent.ac.uk/is/regulations/library/kar-take-down-policy.html).
Uncontrolled keywords: Parallel processing; UNITY
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming,
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
SWORD Depositor: SWORD Copy
Depositing User: SWORD Copy
Date Deposited: 04 Jul 2023 10:04 UTC
Last Modified: 04 Jul 2023 10:04 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/94300 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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