Sun recently came up with a new technology to write applications for the Sun Grid Compute Utility. Under the cover it is based on Jini.

It is available for download at on the Developer Network web site.

Installation notes are also available at this site.

I installed the Netbeans module, picked on of the examples: integralpi built the project which generates a zip file: gridjob.zip in the dist directory, logged in to Sun Grid, created a resource using gridjob.zip, created a job using gridjob.zip and specifying "start" as the executable and submitted the job. The job ran for few minutes, I downloaded the result and checked the value of pi in the cs_master file:

cat cs_master.o68935.2

Sleeping for 0 seconds
Your job-array 68936.4-102:1 ("cs_ephemeralworker -ephemeral") has been submitted
Sep 27, 2006 4:43:43 PM com.sun.computeserver.master.Master run
INFO: Master starting
Sep 27, 2006 4:44:05 PM com.sun.computeserver.integralpi.PiGenerator done
INFO: Master PI:3.1415906524138111994160239945727946065207750695568908515112969308267806110
10577374635946745511251244209674355608893092721700668334960937500
Sep 27, 2006 4:44:05 PM com.sun.computeserver.master.Master doWaitForFeedback
INFO: Master exiting via WAIT
Sep 27, 2006 4:44:05 PM com.sun.computeserver.mm.MasterAspect doOutput
INFO:
Job Succeeded

Sep 27, 2006 4:44:05 PM com.sun.computeserver.mm.MasterAspect doOutput
INFO:
 Master Job Start Time       : 2006-09-27 16:43:43.674
 Master Job End Time         : 2006-09-27 16:44:05.187
 Total Job Execution Time    : 21.513 Seconds
 Total Processed Tasks       : 100
 Total Failed Tasks          : 0
 Total Submitted Tasks       : 100
             Generated       : 100
             Fissioned       : 0
 Task Throughput             : 4.7 Tasks per Second
 Average Task Execution Time : 0.215 Seconds per Task

By default, 100 tasks are used. You can see the output of each worker:

cat cs_ephemeralworker.o68936.86

Sleeping for 8 seconds
Sep 27, 2006 4:44:03 PM com.sun.computeserver.worker.WorkerWatcher init
INFO: Worker active on nyc1r226cpn06.retail.nyc1.sungrid.net
Sep 27, 2006 4:44:09 PM com.sun.computeserver.worker.WorkerWatcher goAway
INFO: Worker exiting nyc1r226cpn06.retail.nyc1.sungrid.net