This is desirable for sites which have large installations of workstations, since the cost of new parallel systems are prohibitive. It allows UNIX based machines of varying hardware types to be organized and utilized by a programmer of parallel applications. Every user keeps a separate copy of the system so that security issues are covered by the normal UNIX operating environment. Machines are organized by classes, which are terms that can be used to label and group them into more manageable units. For example, users might want to create a class based on the byte ordering of machines, or by their location.
Users can then specify more completely which machines they want to use for a particular session.
A user creates an object to perform a certain task, such as constructing part of a fractal image. Objects are machine independent, which means that the same object can be run simultaneously on different platforms. This is achieved by translating all messages into standard network byte ordering. However, if user data is being passed between objects, it is the user's responsibility to make sure byte ordering is correct. These components help control and manage object interactions.