nixCraft

My C programs do some math calculations that operate on bulk data. The exe files run for hours together & most have memory allocations. Some times i use top to check the programs using max cpu and find that my exe files take upto 99 percent cpu ( i have a 1.7Ghz processor). I thought of using parallel processing. I have one more computer but it has windows. Can anyone guide me about parallel processing between a Linux and Windows?

You are right speeding-up the execution of a program by dividing the program into multiple fragments that can execute simultaneously, each on its own processor. A program being executed across N processors might execute N times faster than it would using a single processor.
You can do that with
* SMP Linux systems
* Clusters of networked Linux systems
* Parallel execution using MMX
* Attached (parallel) processors hosted by a Linux system
* PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine)
* ETC

I think PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) should solve your problem. According PVM docs "
It is a software package that permits a heterogeneous collection of Unix/Linux and/or Windows computers hooked together by a network to be used as a single large parallel computer. Thus large computational problems can be solved more cost effectively by using the aggregate power and memory of many computers. The software is very portable. The source, which is available free thru netlib, has been compiled on everything from laptops to CRAYs.

PVM enables users to exploit their existing computer hardware to solve much larger problems at minimal additional cost. Hundreds of sites around the world are using PVM to solve important scientific, industrial, and medical problems in addition to PVM's use as an educational tool to teach parallel programming. With tens of thousands of users, PVM has become the de facto standard for distributed computing world-wide"

Visit http://www.csm.ornl.gov/pvm/ to download software and read docs.

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thanx for info. i am yet to go through the link you mentioned. A small query reg. the software u talked about. Do we need to modify our C source code to cater these softwares or just having these softwares properly configured on our network is enough. I presume i would learn more after i go through the link, but stil.

Naa it won't work out of box i.e you need to port your existing Applications to PVM; then only it will work. Your current program is for single x86 based ... it will never understand PVM so first you need to develope the distributed-memory parallel version of the application algorithm related to structure, and those related to efficiency.

Once you are done, then you will be able to take advantage of PVM and you can execute program Of course it increases complexity of program but then it delivers speed too

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Vivek Gite
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It is funny I visited PVM site and I think it is good but not for kavi's app; it will take more time to setup then you might expected... but good to see this kind of info get discuessed here

You gave me a hint that its not good for my application. Well then i would be more than glad if you could give me a solution if you know. was just kidding!!
well i was about to starting working on PVM

Haa

i thought it will be too much work for home based two computers, if it is some sorta of big application which involved number crunching then you need this kind of technique. but then you see i'm noob in both programming and UNIX.. anyways let us know when you done through PVM.. like how you did it and how much time it took to install etc It may be useful to me or someone else in future

just my thought and all the best for PVM