Analyzing Programming Effort Model Accuracy of High-Level Parallel Programs for Stream Processing

Abstract

Over the years, several Parallel Programming Models (PPMs) have supported the abstraction of programming complexity for parallel computer systems. However, few studies aim to evaluate the productivity reached by such abstractions since this is a complex task that involves human beings. There are several studies to develop predictive methods to estimate the effort required to develop software applications. In order to evaluate the reliability of such metrics, it is necessary to assess the accuracy in different programming paradigms. In this work, we used the data of an experiment conducted with beginners in parallel programming to determine the effort required for implementing stream parallelism using FastFlow, SPar, and TBB. Our results show that some traditional software effort estimation models, such as COCOMO II, fall short. In contrast, Planning Poker could contribute toward a parallel-aware effort model.