Howdy angelcj-ga,
No, a Parallel Virtual Machine, or PVM is not an Operationg System
(OS) but rather a software tool or package.
A PVM is defined in this San Diego Supercomputer Center at UCSD's
"BUILDING YOUR OWN PARALLEL SYSTEM WITH PVM" web article.
http://www.sdsc.edu/GatherScatter/gsnov92/PVMparallel.html
"... PVM is a software system that enables concurrent computing on
loosely coupled networks of processing elements."
For a more mainstream definition of a PVM, there is this Oak Ridge
National Laboratory Computer Science and Mathematics page.
http://www.csm.ornl.gov/pvm/pvm_home.html
"PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is a software package that permits
a heterogeneous collection of Unix and/or Windows computers hooked
together by a network to be used as a single large parallel computer."
As one might suspect, this has very specialized applications, and
the resume of Abhinav Das points out some likely ones.
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~adas/resume/resume.htm
"Developed a tool ... for'Deployment of Internet based distributed
applications using Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) library' ... The
tool can be used in parallel computing for applications similar to
SETI@home, breaking encryption schemes and finding large prime numbers."
In other words, a PVM is best suited for operations or tasks that require
lots of number crunching, or calculations, such as breaking codes, finding
prime numbers, or complicated graphics such as ray tracing.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ray+tracing
A popular ray tracing program has the ability to use a PVM.
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/povray/
"I have invested some time into PVM POV-Ray in order to learn about
PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine). A patch is available for POV-Ray 3.0
to allow rendering an image/animation on a network of computers."
Since it is so specialized, it wouldn't make sense to use a PVM for
almost all other applications, such as word processing or a browser.
If you need any clarification, feel free to ask.
Search Strategy:
Google search on: "parallel virtual machine"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22parallel+virtual+machine%22
Looking Forward, denco-ga - Google Answers Researcher |
