Elsevier

Parallel Computing

Volume 10, Issue 1, March 1989, Pages 15-28
Parallel Computing

Automatic transformation of high-level object-oriented specifications into parallel programs

https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-8191(89)90074-4Get rights and content

Abstract

The basic principles and the overall design of the automatic transformation system SUSPENSE (SUprenum SPEcification tool for Numerical SoftwareE), which transforms specifications into parallel programs, are presented.

The system supports a high-level specification language for partial differetial equations (PDEs) and related areas in numerical analysis. The language offers facilities to describe and manipulate numerical objects such as vectors, matrices, domains, grids etc. on a high level of abstraction. Sequential algorithms can be formulated by means of general iterators which describe (in contrast to procedural programming languages) only partial orders on objects. Parallelism is obtained in a domain-specific way by splitting numerical objects such as grids, vectors etc. into segments which will be processed in parallel.

The target language for the transformation system is the parallel FORTRAN dialect SUPRENUM-FORTRAN. This language is under development as a part of the German supercomputer project SUPRENUM.

Algorithms written and transformed in SUSPENSE are tailored to the parallel SUPRENUM machine which consists of up to 256 processors with local memory only and message-based communication.

SUSPENSE demonstrates that well-known theoretical concepts from computer science such as high-level specifications, design by ‘stepwise refinement’ etc., work well in the field of numerical analysis and the generation of parallel programs.

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  • Cited by (0)

    The work described in this report is being carried out as part of the German Supercomputer project SUPRENUM and is funded by the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology, Fed. Rep. Germany, under grant number ITR8502D0. The authors assume all responsibility for the contents of this report.

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