Abstract
We have shown how graphical languages such as CODE/ROPE and PPSE can be used to design SIMD or data parallel programs. The advantages of this approach are machine independence, design clarity, automated program analysis, and accelerated software development. The disadvantages are that many problems remain in this approach such as how to reduce design clutter, how to automate optimal processor mapping, and how to perform messagepassing optimization. More work is needed before this approach can be used in the design of large-scale applications, but we believe the approach is promising. The main contribution is to show how the simple ideas of stencils, stream generators, and replicators can be used effectively to extend the classical dataflow design paradigm into the data parallel design paradigm. While more work is needed, these three ideas lead to greater expressiveness of design. The PPSE toolset currently does much of the mapping, scheduling, and automatic code generation described in this paper. However, PPSE does not currently handle data parallel programming. Work is progressing toward a full implementation of these ideas. Even so, PPSE has been invaluable for performing a variety of what-if analyses on parallel programs. Insights have been gained with this approach that would not be possible with a purely textual representation of the parallel program.
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© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Lewis, T.G., Currey, R., Liu, J. (1992). Data parallel program design. In: Zima, H.P. (eds) Parallel Computation. ACPC 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 591. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-55437-8_69
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-55437-8_69
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