The Network view displays the present virtual machine configuration and the activity of the hosts. Each host is represented by an icon that includes the PVM_ARCH and host name inside the icon. In the initial release of XPVM, the icons are arranged arbitrarily on both sides of a bus network. In future releases the view will be extended to visualize network activity as well. At that time the user will be able to specify the network topology to display.
These icons are illuminated in different colors to indicate their status in executing PVM tasks. Green implies that at least one task on that host is busy executing useful work. Yellow indicates that no tasks are executing user computation, but at least one task is busy executing PVM system routines. When there are no tasks on a given host, its icon is left uncolored or white. The specific colors used in each case are user customizable.
The user can tell at a glance how well the virtual machine is being utilized by his PVM application. If all the hosts are green most of the time, then machine utilization is good. The Network view does not display activity from other users' PVM jobs or other processes that may be running on the hosts.
In future releases the view will allow the user to click on a multiprocessor icon and get information about the number of processors, number of PVM tasks, etc., that are running on the host.