A library-based approach to portable, parallel, object-oriented programming

Steven Parkes, John A. Chandy, Prithviraj Banerjee
1994 Supercomputing, Proceedings  
TbcuseofparalLJpla form.r, despite increasing avaiihbility, remains krge[yr estrictedto wel[-structured, numeric applications. We address the imue offaci[itating the use ofparaileip.ktj$orms on unstructured probkms through o~ect-oriented desip techniques and the actor mode[ of concurrent computation. 'We prese& a madti-leve[ approach to eqwessing para[klkm for unstructured applications: a high-level interface based on the actor model of concurrent ob]"ect-oriented programming and a low-level
more » ... er-@ce whicbprovides an object-oriented inteface to system services across a wide range ofparalkl architectures. The high-and bJwleve[ interfaces are imp.kmentedmpart oftbe ProperCAD II C++ class library which supports shared-memory, message-passin~and and hybrid architectures. l% demonstrate our approach tbrou~h . . a detaikd examination of the parallelizztion process for an existing unstructured serial application, a state-of-the-art VLSI computer-aided design application. We compare and contrast the library-based actor approach to other methods for mpressinp arallelism in C++ on a number of applications and kerne.k 1063-9535/94 $4.0001994 IEEE architecture.
doi:10.1145/602770.602789 fatcat:ifs4oy5vwbe5rp4n3ma32nedna