Evaluating high level parallel programming support for irregular applications in ICC++

Abstract

Object-oriented techniques have been proffered as aids for managing complexity, enhancing reuse, and improving readability of parallel applications, and numerous variants have been explored. These techniques appear especially promising for irregular applications, where modularity and encapsulation help manage complex data and parallelism structures. In this paper, we evaluate a high level concurrent object system's programmability for achieving high performance on irregular applications. Our study is done in the context of a high-performance compiler and run-time system for parallel computers, which has been the vehicle for research on compiler optimization and run-time techniques over the past five years. We evaluate programming effort for a varied suite of irregular parallel applications.