A transport solution for pipelined network computing

A pipelined network computing paradigm is proposed for efficiently implementing a class of distributed scientific computing and visualization applications. This research effort deals with the design and evaluation of a new transport protocol solution to satisfy the interprocess communication (scIPC) needs of network distributed pipelines. The solution includes (1) an scIPC primitive called segment streaming that allows concurrent computation and communication, (2) a new model for performance analysis of asynchronous network pipelines, (3) an application-oriented error control scheme that satisfies an application's error tolerance with minimum retransmissions, and (4) a two-level flow control scheme that avoids overflows in the pipeline while supporting interactive control. The solution is evaluated using a combination of both analytical and simulation methods and implemented in software within the SunOS kernel.