Step 1 of 9: Definition

PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is a software system that allows you to combine a number of computers, connected over a network, into a Parallel Virtual Machine. This machine can consist of computers with different architectures running different flavors of the Unix operating systems, and be treated as if it were a single parallel machine. As the software is a public domain, meaning that many organizations, which already have a cluster of workstations, can get a parallel machine for free and solve larger problems using existing hardware resources.