Design Issues in Parallel Array Languages for Shared Memory ⋆

Abstract. The Hierarchically Tiled Array (HTA) is a data type that facilitates the definition and manipulation of arrays partitioned into tiles. The data type allows to exploit those tiles to attain both locality and parallelism. Parallel programs written with HTAs are based in data parallelism, and provide the programmer with a single-threaded view of the execution. In our experience, HTAs help to develop parallel codes in a much more productive way than other parallel programming approaches. While we have worked extensively with HTAs in distributed memory environments, only recently have we began to consider their adaption to shared memory environments such as those found in multicore systems. In this paper we review the design issues, opportunities and challenges that this migration raises. Key words: parallel programming, data parallelism, tiling, shared memory