Speaker
Matevz Tadel
(CERN)
Description
Gled is an OO research framework for fast prototyping of applications in distributed
and multi-threaded envirnoments with support for direct data interaction and dynamic
visualization. It is an extension of the ROOT framework and thus inherits its core
features, including object serialization, versatile I/O infrastructure (files with
inner directory structures, trees, rootd), CINT -- the C/C++ interpreter and a rich
set of data analysis tools. Gled addresses the problems of concurrent resource
access, remote data synchronization and remote method invocation (OO version of RPC)
by defining a strict object data-model. This paper describes a set of paradigms
governing object habitat, object life-cycle, object aggregation and methods for
securing thread-safe object access. Hierarchical server--client model which is used
to bind several computing nodes in a tree structure is discussed. Problems of
distributed object-space management are presented and procedures used to achieve
their synchronization explained. Overview of Gled support for multi-threaded
execution of user-tasks is made. Thread-control mechanisms are disucussed in the
context of distributed execution. OpenGL based 3D rendering infrastructure of Gled is
briefly described with an emphasis on its capabilities for dynamic visualization and
key-frame animation. Gled is discussed as a development framework. It is argued that
only a thin wrapper over user-code is needed to instrument it with the presented
capabilities of Gled.
Author
Matevz Tadel
(CERN)
