SPMD execution of programs with dynamic data structures on distributed memory machines

Abstract

A combination of language features and compilation techniques that permits SPMD (single-program multiple-data) execution of programs with pointer-based dynamic data structures is presented. The Distributed Dynamic Pascal (DDP) language, which supports the construction and manipulation of local as well as distributed data structures, is described. The compiler techniques developed translate a sequential DDP program for SPMD execution in which all processors are provided with the same program but each processor executes only that part of the program which operates on the elements of the distributed data structures local to the processor. Therefore, the parallelism implicit in a sequential program is exploited. An approach for implementing pointers that is based on the generation of names for the nodes in a dynamic data structure is presented. The name-based strategy makes possible the dynamic distribution of data structures among the processors as well as the traversal of distributed data structures without interprocessor communication. >