Millipede - A Programming Environment providing Graphical Support for Parallel Programming

Abstract

This paper describes Millipede, a graphical programming environment for a Transputer-based MIMD multiprocessor system. The environment provides a visual extension to the CSP/Occam programming model. Parallel programs are described as graphs, where the nodes denote parallel processes and the edges denote communication channels between processes. Graphs are constructed using a hierarchical graph editor which allows the user to group processes (nodes) together into hierarchical process structures. The highest level in the graph hierarchy, called the processor graph, also describes the processor network on which to execute the parallel program. Millipede contains tools for mapping processor graphs onto a reconfigurable transputer network and for configuring the target processor network accordingly. Monitoring data, produced and collected by a performance monitoring system, can also be presented upon the processor graph. 1 Introduction Programming multiprocessor systems is often associated..