Definition
C* (pronounced “see-star”) refers to two distinct data-parallel dialects of C developed by Thinking Machines Corporation for its Connection Machine supercomputers. The first version (1987) is organized around the declaration of domains, similar to classes in C++, but when code associated with a domain is activated, it is executed in parallel within all instances of the domain, not just a single designated instance. Compound assignment operators such as += are extended in C* to perform parallel reduction operations. An elaborate theory of control flow allows use of C control statements in a MIMD-like, yet predictable, fashion despite the fact that the underlying execution model is SIMD. The revised version (1991) replaces domains with shapes that organize processors into multidimensional arrays and abandons the MIMD-like control-flow theory.
Discussion
Of the four programming languages (*Lisp, C*, CM Fortran, and CM-Lisp) provided by Thinking Machines Corporation for...
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Bibliography
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Steele, G.L. (2011). C*. In: Padua, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09766-4_523
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