The use of networks of workstations for number crunching tasks is a promise that has been slow to materialize.
Networked workstations are a very unstable environment.
Nodes crash or are disconnected very frequently, leading to the loss of ongoing computations. To avoid that, complete workstation clusters have to be reserved to run exclusively number crunching applications, an expensive solution that only few can follow. The real cheap solution, that consists of using idle cycles of the many workstations already on general use in an organization, remains illusive objective. To make it real, there is a clear need for fault-tolerance in parallel programs, enabling them to survive workstations crashes and proceed unaffected. This project addresses both issues.