Grid-Based Asynchronous Migration of Execution Context in Java Virtual Machines

Previous research efforts for building thread migration systems have concentrated on the development of frameworks dealing with a small local environment controlled by a single user. Computational Grids provide the opportunity to utilize a large-scale environment controlled over different organizational boundaries. Using this class of large-scale computational resources as part of a thread migration system provides a significant challenge previously not addressed by this community. In this paper we present a framework that integrates Grid services to enhance the functionality of a thread migration system. To accommodate future Grid services, the design of the framework is both flexible and extensible. Currently, our thread migration system contains Grid services for authentication, registration, lookup, and automatic software installation. In the context of distributed applications executed on a Grid-based infrastructure, the asynchronous migration of an execution context can help solve problems such as remote execution, load balancing, and the development of mobile agents. Our prototype is based on the migration of Java threads, allowing asynchronous and heterogeneous migration of the execution context of the running code.