Abstract

Efficient, portable parallel programming requires cost models to compare different possible implementations. In turn, these require knowledge of the shapes of the data structures being used, as well as knowledge of the hardware parameters. This paper shows how shape analysis techniques developed in the FISh programming language could be exploited to produce a data parallel language with an accurate, portable cost model. 1 Introduction The problem of constructing efficient portable parallel programs still remains to be solved. As different architectures can produce radically different levels of efficiency for a given algorithm, most research has focused on capturing hardware characteristics in a form that enables the compiler to choose an appropriate algorithm. For example, one may determine a suite of hardware parameters, as in BSP [Val90, McC94, HS98] or LogP [Ca93], that support a cost model for comparing alternative algorithms. While this work has been essential for our understand...

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