Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: crispin@csd.uwo.ca (Crispin Cowan)
Subject: Re: PVM on Windows PCs?
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
Date: 25 Aug 1994 23:44:59 GMT
Message-ID: <33jadr$gbo@falcon.ccs.uwo.ca>

In article <morphy.105.2E5CF607@alumni.caltech.edu>,
Jones M. Murphy, Jr. <morphy@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>>: PVM on WINDOWS PC
...
>Well, I have finger and ftp daemons working on this Windows 3.1 PC I'm on 
>right now.

You also need rsh (or some other form of remote invocation) and
signals.

It seems to me that it is just barely possible to put PVM on Windows
3.*, but:
	-it will suck (lack of true multitasking)
	-it will be unsafe (lack of inter-process protection)
	-it will be a lot of work (to cobble together compatible
	 interfaces for signals, rsh, etc.)
	-it will have portability problems (if compromises are made to
	 help with the previous points, such as mandating calls to
	 yield--ick)

PVM emulates the functionality of an MPP environment by emulating the
MPP facilities using UNIX facilities.  Windows is neither of these
environments, and isn't even really an operating system, so it will
have a lot of problems doing the job.

If some one tries to sell you some Windows, just defenestrate them :-).

Crispin
-----
Crispin Cowan, CS PhD student, searching for a research position
University of Western Ontario
Phyz-mail:  Middlesex College, MC28-C, London, Ontario, N6A 5B7
E-mail:     crispin@csd.uwo.ca          Voice:  519-661-3342
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