Object Oriented Parallel Programming Experiments and Results

Abstract

We present an object-oriented, parallel programming paradigm, called the distributed collection model and an experimental language PC++ based on this model. In the distributed collection model, programmers can describe the data distribution of elements among processors to utilize memory locality and a collection construct is employed to build distributed structures. The model also supports the express of massive parallelism and a new mechanism for building hierarchies of abstractions. We have implemented PC++ on a variety of machines including VAX8800, Alliant FX/8, Alliant FX/2800, and BBN GP1000. Our experience with application programs in these environments as well as performance results are also described in the paper. 1 Introduction Massively parallel systems consisting of thousands of processors offer huge aggregate computing power. Unfortunately, a new machine of this class is almost useless unless there is a reasonable mechanism for porting software to it so that the resulting..