Farm Pattern

Intent: Allows for efficient load balancing of parallel computers.

See also: PipelinePattern

The idea behind the FarmPattern is to split a large task into several independent small chunks and distribute these chunks to an array of "processors".

The pattern is probably the most frequently used pattern in parallel programming, with applications such as Seti@Home (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/) and video rendering farms.

I haven´t found a systematic treatment of patterns in parallel programming yet. However, you can check http://www.fraber.de/bap/ for a parallel operating system based on these principles, or just contact me (FrankBergmann).

Here's a great implementation: http://www.cs.yale.edu/HTML/YALE/CS/Linda/piranha.html

CategoryPattern