Management of High Performance Scientific Applications using Mobile Agents based Services

Abstract

High performance scientific applications are currently implemented using native languages for optimizing performance and utilization of resources. It often deals with thousands of code lines in FORTRAN or in C built of legacy applications. On the other hand new technologies can be exploited to improve flexibility and portability of services on heterogeneous and distributed platforms. We propose here an approach that allows programmers to extend their applications to exploit this kind of services for management purposes. It can be done simply by adding some methods to the original code, which specialize application management on occurrence of particular events. We mean that applications do not need to be rewritten into different languages or adopting specific programming models. We implemented a native console that is used by Mobile Agents to control the application life-cycle. Agents implement a mobile service that supports check-pointing, suspension, resume, cloning and migration of managed applications. A WSRF interface has been provided to Grid users who do not need to be aware about agents technology. We used a FORTRAN code for simulation of plasma turbolence as a real case study.