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Project Goals The goals of MetaNEOS are to
What's a Metacomputer? A metacomputing platform is made up of a collection of computers (and possibly other resources such as visualization and storage devices) that are geographically distributed, but networked in various ways. The metacomputing platforms that we use in metaNEOS have the overriding advantage that they are inexpensive. We focus in particular on platforms that utilize idle time on collections of workstations, which is essentially free. The Condor system delivers an environment of this type. Despite their low cost, the platforms we use are potentially very powerful. However, they have features that make them much more difficult to program than traditional parallel computers. These include:
The metaNEOS project integrates fundamental algorithmic research in optimization with research and infrastructure tool development in distributed systems management. Algorithms that can exploit the powerful but heterogeneous, high-latency and possibly failure-prone virtual hardware platform typical of metacomputing platforms have been developed in such areas as
We have developed a new API called MW that enables straightforward implementation of a wide variety of algorithms and applications on the Condor high-throughput computing environment. Check out iMW, our web-based problem-solving environment for metacomputing applications. We're now solving benchmark problems in stochastic programming and the quadratic assignment problem of record-breaking size on the Condor pools at the University of Wisconsin.
Seymour mixed integer programming instance solved! (07/2000) |