Oregon State University. Department of Computer Science
Abstract
Within a decade, the amount of raw data acquired each day by satellite -based instrumentation will exceed 1 terabyte (10¹² bytes). Virtually all quantitative data acquired about the Earth is useful [10]. Processing the raw data into useful information will be an enormous task . Much of the current data analysis software is FORTRAN dusty-deck code. To handle the data volume expected, not only will much of the currently used code need to be transformed or redesigned into parallel code, but many new parallel programs will need to be written from scratch. Although parallel computers are already in existence, the task of writing parallel software has proved to be exceedingly difficult [1]. The Parallel Programming Support Environment (PPSE) is intended to assist the parallel programer in the process of designing a parallel program. The primary focus of this work is to test the tools of PPSE on an actual mid-sized (4000 lines of code) FORTRAN program and report on the experience. The program (AVHTST) is part of a series of FORTRAN data analysis programs which automate the process of determining cloud properties from satellite imagery data. Although A VHTST has been in use for several years, it has been identified as being in need of parallelization in the literature [5]. The objective of this research is to concurrently examine viable methods of producing a useful parallel program while testing the utility of the PPSE tools. The product of this research is a prototype parallel version of AVHTST, a description of the usage of the PPSE tools, a list of possible improvements and extensions to the tools, and a plan for integrating the tools
