TIDeFlow: The Time Iterated Dependency Flow Execution Model

Abstract

The many-core revolution brought forward by recent advances in computer architecture has created immense challenges in the writing of parallel programs for High Performance Computing (HPC). Development of parallel HPC programs remains an art, and a universaldoctrine for synchronization, scheduling and execution in general has not been found for many-core/multi-core architectures. These issues are exacerbated by the popularity of traditional execution models derived from the serial-programming school of thought.Previous solutions for parallel programming, such as OpenMP, MPI and similar models, require significant effort from the programmer to achieve high performance.This paper provides an introduction to the Time Iterated Dependency Flow (TIDeFlow) model, a parallel execution model inspired by dataflow, and a description of its associated runtime system. TIDeFlow was designed forefficient development of high performance parallel programs for many-core architectures. The TIDeFlow execution model was designed to efficiently express (1) parallel loops, (2) dependencies (data, control or other) between parallel loops and (3) to allow composability of programs.TIDeFlow is a work in progress. This paper presents an introduction to the TIDeFlow execution model and shows examples and preliminary results to illustrate the qualities of TIDeFlow. The main contributions of this paper are:1) A brief description of the TIDeFlow execution model, and its programming model,2) A description of the implementation of the TIDeFlow runtime system and its capabilities and3) Preliminary results showing the suitability of TIDeFlow to express parallel programs in many-core architectures.