The MultiLoop programming construct

Abstract

This paper introduces a new high-level parallel programming construct called multiLoop that is designed to extend existing imperative languages such as C and Java. A multiLoop statement translates to SPMD specification of a named group of synchronous-iterative processes. For efficient iterative communication, multiLoop provides a new publish/subscribe model of shared variable access. Under this model the sequential consistency of shared memory is maintained by a new, simple and efficient adaptation of virtual time paradigm. Virtual time is a localised message tagging and queuing procedure that provides a highly efficient alternative to barrier calls. ML-C, a prototype implementation based on C has been developed. We describe the programming model, discuss its implementation and present some empirical data showing good performance obtained for an example of the target class of applications.