University of Houston
Department of Computer Science



In partial fullfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Science


Zhihong Huang
will defend his thesis

AN INTERACTIVE CLIENT USER INTERFACE TO A PARALLEL PROGRAM

Abstract

Parallel computing offers the ability to speed up the computation time. It also enables the solution of a problem that would otherwise be impracticable by single agent. However, programs developed in the parallel machines are difficult to use because of the following reasons. First, most of the end-users are non-computer background scientists; they are not familiar with the architecture of the parallel machine, the operating system, and the programming details. Also, to access the parallel program, they must have an account on the parallel machine. Third, those parallel programs usually don't have friendly interactive GUI for the users. In this thesis, we present the design of an interactive client/server parallel computing system, which executes a parallel program running on SP2. It consists of a Java client application for initiating environments, submitting input files and parameters, and controlling the execution of the parallel program on SP2. The application can be run on any platform that has java 1.1 installed. Through its window-based interactive GUI, users can activate the remote server program, specify the number of nodes and messages, control the number of iterations, and display the output image data. The implementation of an interactive client user interface to the parallel program has many advantages. First, it is user friendly. Second, it makes parallel programs widely available to many users who do not have computer science background. Third, it provides more flexible access and control to a parallel program without having an account and knowing internal details.


Date: Tuesday, April 27, 1999
Time: 3:00pm-4:00pm
Place: 550-PGH


Faculty, students, and the general public are invited
Thesis Advisor: Dr. Stephen Huang