1. Componentising and Deploying a Scientific Application on the Grid
Nikos Parlavantzas, Vladimir Getov
Matthieu  Morel, Françoise  Baude,
Fabrice Huet, Denis Caromel
INRIA & University of Westminster

2. Context
Component-based development (CBD) promises to simplify building and evolving grid applications.
Questions
What are the actual benefits and costs of CBD?
How do we support developers in applying CBD (technologies/ methods)?

3. Case study Summary
Re-engineered a complex, scientific application into a component-based Grid application using:
general componentisation process
Fractal/ProActive component model
Showed that componentisation has:
increased modifiability and reusability
no adverse effect on performance

4. Jem3D Numerical solver for the 3D Maxwell’s equations
finite volume method on tetrahedral meshes
Follows typical “geometric decomposition” parallelisation
Distributed object application using ProActive library

5. Original Jem3D architecture

6. Problem Jem3D suffers from limited modifiability and reusability
No architectural documentation
Difficult to understand and evolve system
Hard-wired, hidden dependencies
Limited reusability of parts
Limited run-time variability

7. Componentisation process
General, architecture-based process
Object-based Component-based system system
Assumptions for target component platform
provided/required interfaces
same interaction styles as object platform

8. Componentisation process

9. Fractal/ProActive
Parallel and distributed component model targeting Grid applications (GCM prototype)
Inherits features of Fractal
hierarchical composition
declarative architecture description
extensible reflective facilities
Extends Fractal with
distributed components
multicast interfaces
configurable deployment on the Grid

10. Component-based Jem3D

11. Initial configuration in ADL
Component ConsoleSteeringAgent
definition = SteeringAgentImpl
Component MainCollector
definition = MainCollectorImpl
Component Activator
definition = ActivatorImpl
Component Domain
Interface …
Component SubDomainFactory
definition =FactoryImpl (SubDomainImpl)
Binding This to SubDomainFactory
Binding SubDomainFactory to This
Binding ConsoleSteeringAgent to MainCollector
Binding MainCollector to ConsoleSteeringAgent …

12. Qualitative evaluation
Reliable architectural documentation
Configuration after development time
Reusable implementation of geometrical decomposition
Improved modifiability and reusability

13. Performance evaluation 1/2
Comparison object/component-based versions on
Single Cluster
similar computation times
longer initialisation time for component version

14. Performance evaluation 2/2
Comparison object/component-based versions on Grid’5000
used up to 308 processors, allocated on up to 3 clusters
similar execution times

15. Conclusion
Case study in re-engineering a scientific application into a component-based application
improved modifiability and reusability
no adverse effect on performance
Future work
add support for dynamic reconfiguration to Jem3D
apply approach to diverse applications