Abstract
We focus on two criticisms of Bulk Synchronous Parallelism (BSP): that delaying communication until specific points in a program causes poor performance, and that frequent barrier synchronisations are too expensive for high-performance parallel computing. We show that these criticisms are misguided, not just about BSP but about parallel programming in general, because they are based on misconceptions about the origins of poor performance. The main implication for parallel programming is that higher levels of abstraction do not only make software construction easier—they also make high-performance implementation easier.
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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Hill, J.M.D., Skillicorn, D.B. (1997). Lessons learned from implementing BSP. In: Hertzberger, B., Sloot, P. (eds) High-Performance Computing and Networking. HPCN-Europe 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1225. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0031647
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0031647
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