Motivation
Goals
Related Documents
Personnel
Contact: dstanzi@clemson.edu
is
an infrastructure for the creation of Problem Solving Environments.
Specifically, this project grew out of the need to solve a number of different
classes of engineering and science problems on a variety of high-performance
computer architectures. CECAAD attempts to identify all the common elements of
problem solving environments, then provide some support for creating those
elements. At present, CECAAD includes the following elements:
ADF -- The Algorithm Description Format
ADF is a generic format for storing an attributed graph. Virtually any
algorithm in any application can be stored as an attributed graph one way or
another. The attribute format makes ADF extremely flexible -- not only can it
represent many different problems, it can represent them at many different
levels of abstraction. The components of ADF are implemented as a set of Java
classes. The public interface to them can be found here
or by following the link below in the documents
section.
Agent Model -- Agents are entities which manipulate ADF designs. CECAAD
provides a number of agents, and extensive support for creating new agents.
ADF Manager-- The ADF Manager is responsible for coordinating the
actions of the agents on the shared design. The primary role of the ADF
Manager is to handle all I/O associated with ADF designs. The ADF Manager
also manages libraries of ADF designs. Libraries exist either as SQL
databases, or as directories on a filesystem. The ADF Manager supports a rich
set of queries on the design libraries, but only a subset of the searching
functionality works if the library is not in a database. The Manager allows
agents (and therefore users) access to both types of libraries simultaneously.
The manager also keeps all running agents notified of changes in the
currently active designs. The programmers interface to the ADF Manager, as
well as more information about its internal structure, can be found
here .
Displays -- Displays are windows where agents can interact with users. Multiple agents can interact with a user through a single display, and agents can move between displays or use multiple displays. An agent describes to the display how it wishes to appear and interact with the users through its views. More details about displays and views can be found in the Agent Writer's Guide
ADF Launcher
Common Shared Agents:
ADF Editor
ASCII Translator
Task Partitioning Tool
File Loader
Problem
Solving Environment Infrastructure for HPC Systems
Brian's
Master's thesis on CECAAD
Interface
to the ADFmanager
Agent interface to ADF designs
Poster Presentation for SuperComputing '98
SPIE paper on RCADE
Aerospace paper on RCADE
Dr. Walt Ligon
is the faculty advisor and general overlord of all the PARL lab activities.
Dan Stanzione
is the PhD student heading the CECAAD and Parallel
Programming Environment projects, and is also involved in the RCADE project.
Among his other duties are running this web page, system administration of
most of the PARL lab, and teaching a number of undergraduate courses. Dan is
also responsible for all the silly acronyms on these pages. If you have
complaints or comments, you probably want to contact Dan (see contact info above).
Brian Boysen is
an MS student just completing his degree and going off to work for Lucent
Technologies. He did a lot of the actual coding on the CECAAD infrastructure,
including all the work on the ADF Editor. Click on the link above in
documents to check out his thesis
The Parallel Architecture
Research Lab
Clemson University's Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Problem-Solving Enviroment Related Links:
Problem Solving Environments Research Group
EPOCH Home Page
Parallel Processing Related Links:
These two links provide a pretty extensive listing of parallel processing stuff, so I won't repeat it all hear