`Receiver makes right' data conversion in PVM

Using a Receiver Makes it Right (RMR) data conversion technique in PVM significantly improves the message-passing performance in heterogeneous environments. The improvements are due to two factors: 1). RMR reduces the need for conversions in a heterogeneous environment; 2). At most each message is converted, only once compared to twice for XDR used in public version of PVM, and our conversion routines are streamlined and are several times faster than the XDR routines. The drawback to RMR is the potential need for a large number of conversion routines. We demonstrate that only a small number of routines are required because many vendors use the IEEE standard for data representation. Given this fact, RMR may emerge as a promising technique in distributed computing.