A heterogeneous parallel system running open mpi on a broadband network of embedded set-top devices

  • Authors:

  • Richard Neill;Alexander Shabarshin;Luca P. Carloni

  • Affiliations:

  • Columbia University, New York, NY, USA;Cablevision Systems, Bethpage, NY, USA;Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 7th ACM international conference on Computing frontiers
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

We present a heterogeneous parallel computing system that combines a traditional computer cluster with a broadband network of embedded set-top box (STB) devices. As multiple service operators (MSO) manage millions of these devices across wide geographic areas, the computational power of such a massively-distributed embedded system could be harnessed to realize a centrally-managed, energy-efficient parallel processing platform that supports a variety of application domains which are of interest to MSOs, consumers, and the high-performance computing research community. We investigate the feasibility of this idea by building a prototype system that includes a complete head-end cable system with a DOCSIS-2.0 network combined with an interoperable implementation of a subset of Open MPI running on the STB embedded operating system. We evaluate the performance and scalability of our system compared to a traditional cluster by solving approximately various instances of the Multiple Sequence Alignment bioinformatics problem, while the STBs continue simultaneously to operate their primary functions: decode MPEG streams for television display and run an interactive user interface. Based on our experimental results and given the technology trends in embedded computing we argue that our approach to leverage a broadband network of embedded devices in a heterogeneous distributed system offers the benefits of both parallel computing clusters and distributed Internet computing.