A Model for Designing and Implementing Parallel Applications Using Extensible Architectural Skeletons

Abstract

With the advent of hardware technologies, high-performance parallel computers and commodity clusters are becoming affordable. However, complexity of parallel application development remains one of the major obstacles towards the mainstream adoption of parallel computing. As one of the solution techniques, researchers are actively investigating the pattern-based approaches to parallel programming. As re-usable components, patterns are intended to ease the design and development phases of a parallel applications. While using patterns, a developer supplies the application specific code-components whereas the underlying environment generates most of the code for parallelization. PAS (Parallel Architectural Skeleton) is one such pattern-based parallel programming model and tool, which defines the architectural aspects of parallel computational patterns. Like many other pattern-based models and tools, the PAS model was hampered by its lack of extensibility, i.e., lacking of support for the systematic addition of new skeletons to an existing skeleton repository. Lack of extensibility significantly reduces the flexibility and hence the usability of a particular approach. SuperPAS is an extension of PAS that defines a model for systematically designing and implementing PAS skeletons by a skeleton designer. The newly implemented skeletons can subsequently be used by an application developer. SuperPAS model is realized through a Skeleton Description Language (SDL), which assists both a skeleton designer and an application developer. The paper discusses the SuperPAS model through examples that use the SDL. The paper also discusses some of the recent usability and performance studies, which demonstrate that SuperPAS is a practical and usable parallel programming model and tool.