Live Webcast 15th Annual Charm++ Workshop

How to conquer the complexity of parallel programming is a topic that has been debated since the inception of the field. Various attempts at doing so, including parallelizing compilers, and other higher level languages such as HPF, have not succeeded. With scalable parallel computing subfield, some of the reasons for this failure have to do with the high premium placed on "performance" by practitioners, and the inability of the complex and sophisticated compiler analysis techniques to deliver performance and useful abstraction in a uniform manner. We argue that a relatively simple compilation support, based on well understood techniques in static analysis, can help improve the productivity substantially, if it is linked with a rich and sophisticated (and therefore complex) programming substrate provided by an adaptive runtime system. Specifically, I will present Charj, a compiler-supported language we are designing based on the Charm++ runtime system. I will illustrate the potential and realized productivity benefits using basic analysis techniques, code generation, and support for convenient syntax. The talk is largely based on the PhD thesis of Aaron Becker, who defended his dissertation last week.