Javia: A Java interface to the virtual interface architecture
The implementation and evaluation of Javia, a Java interface to the VI architecture, are presented and performance evaluations show that Javia can serve as an efficient building block for Java cluster applications.
Abstract
The Virtual Interface (VI) architecture has become the industry standard for user-level network interfaces. This paper presents the implementation and evaluation of Javia, a Java interface to the VI architecture. Javia explores two points in the design space. The first approach manages buffers in C and requires data copies between the Java heap and native buffers. The second approach relies on a Java-level buffer abstraction that eliminates the copies in the first approach. Javia achieves an effective bandwidth of 80 Mbytes s−1 for 8 kbyte messages, which is within 1% of those achieved by C programs. Performance evaluations of parallel matrix multiplication and of the active messages communication protocol show that Javia can serve as an efficient building block for Java cluster applications. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.