Process-Oriented Parallel Programming with an Application to Data-Intensive Computing

We introduce process-oriented programming as a natural extension of object-oriented programming for parallel computing. It is based on the observation that every class of an object-oriented language can be instantiated as a process, accessible via a remote pointer. The introduction of process pointers requires no syntax extension, identifies processes with programming objects, and enables processes to exchange information simply by executing remote methods. Process-oriented programming is a high-level language alternative to multithreading, MPI and many other languages, environments and tools currently used for parallel computations. It implements natural object-based parallelism using only minimal syntax extension of existing languages, such as C++ and Python, and has therefore the potential to lead to widespread adoption of parallel programming. We implemented a prototype system for running processes using C++ with MPI and used it to compute a large three-dimensional Fourier transform on a computer cluster built of commodity hardware components. Three-dimensional Fourier transform is a prototype of a data-intensive application with a complex data-access pattern. The process-oriented code is only a few hundred lines long, and attains very high data throughput by achieving massive parallelism and maximizing hardware utilization.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figur

Group Communication Patterns for High Performance Computing in Scala

We developed a Functional object-oriented Parallel framework (FooPar) for high-level high-performance computing in Scala. Central to this framework are Distributed Memory Parallel Data structures (DPDs), i.e., collections of data distributed in a shared nothing system together with parallel operations on these data. In this paper, we first present FooPar's architecture and the idea of DPDs and group communications. Then, we show how DPDs can be implemented elegantly and efficiently in Scala based on the Traversable/Builder pattern, unifying Functional and Object-Oriented Programming. We prove the correctness and safety of one communication algorithm and show how specification testing (via ScalaCheck) can be used to bridge the gap between proof and implementation. Furthermore, we show that the group communication operations of FooPar outperform those of the MPJ Express open source MPI-bindings for Java, both asymptotically and empirically. FooPar has already been shown to be capable of achieving close-to-optimal performance for dense matrix-matrix multiplication via JNI. In this article, we present results on a parallel implementation of the Floyd-Warshall algorithm in FooPar, achieving more than 94 % efficiency compared to the serial version on a cluster using 100 cores for matrices of dimension 38000 x 38000

A distributed Real-Time Java system based on CSP

CSP is a fundamental concept for developing software for distributed real time systems. The CSP paradigm constitutes a natural addition to object orientation and offers higher order multithreading constructs. The CSP channel concept that has been implemented in Java deals with single- and multi-processor environments and also takes care of the real time priority scheduling requirements. For this, the notion of priority and scheduling has been carefully examined and as a result it was reasoned that priority scheduling should be attached to the communicating channels rather than to the processes. In association with channels, a priority based parallel construct is developed for composing processes: hiding threads and priority indexing from the user. This approach simplifies the use of priorities for the object oriented paradigm. Moreover, in the proposed system, the notion of scheduling is no longer connected to the operating system but has become part of the application instead

Implementing Session Centered Calculi

Recently, specific attention has been devoted to the development of service oriented process calculi. Besides the foundational aspects, it is also interesting to have prototype implementations for them in order to assess usability and to minimize the gap between theory and practice. Typically, these implementations are done in Java taking advantage of its mechanisms supporting network applications. However, most of the recurrent features of service oriented applications are re-implemented from scratch. In this paper we show how to implement a service oriented calculus, CaSPiS (Calculus of Services with Pipelines and Sessions) using the Java framework IMC, where recurrent mechanisms for network applications are already provided. By using the session oriented and pattern matching communication mechanisms provided by IMC, it is relatively simple to implement in Java all CaSPiS abstractions and thus to easily write the implementation in Java of a CaSPiS process

The role of concurrency in an evolutionary view of programming abstractions

In this paper we examine how concurrency has been embodied in mainstream programming languages. In particular, we rely on the evolutionary talking borrowed from biology to discuss major historical landmarks and crucial concepts that shaped the development of programming languages. We examine the general development process, occasionally deepening into some language, trying to uncover evolutionary lineages related to specific programming traits. We mainly focus on concurrency, discussing the different abstraction levels involved in present-day concurrent programming and emphasizing the fact that they correspond to different levels of explanation. We then comment on the role of theoretical research on the quest for suitable programming abstractions, recalling the importance of changing the working framework and the way of looking every so often. This paper is not meant to be a survey of modern mainstream programming languages: it would be very incomplete in that sense. It aims instead at pointing out a number of remarks and connect them under an evolutionary perspective, in order to grasp a unifying, but not simplistic, view of the programming languages development process