Implementing a parallel C++ runtime system for scalable parallel systems

Abstract

pC++ is a language extension to C++ designed to allow programmers to compose concurrent aggregate collection classes which can be aligned and distributed over the memory hierarchy of a parallel machine in a manner modeled on the High Performance Fortran Forum (HPFF) directives for Fortran 90. pC++ allows the user to write portable and efficient code which will run on a wide range of scalable parallel computer systems. The first version of the compiler is a preprocessor which generates Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) C++ code. Currently, it runs on the Thinking Machine CM-5, the Intel Paragon, the BBN TC2000, the Kendall Square Research KSR-1, and the Sequent Symmetry. The authors describe the implementation of the runtime system, which provides the concurrency and communication primitives between objects in a distributed collection. To illustrate the behavior of the runtime system, they include a description and performance results on four benchmark programs.