Live Webcast 15th Annual Charm++ Workshop

It has been observed that data-parallel languages are only suited to problems with “regular” structures. This observation prompts a question: to what extent are other parallel programming languages specialized to specific problem structures, and are there any truly general-purpose parallel programming languages, suited to all problem structures? In this talk we define our concept of “problem structure”. Given this definition, we describe what it means for a language construct to “directly reflect” a problem structure, and we argue the importance of using a language construct which reflects the problem structure. We describe the difficulties that arise when the language construct and the problem structure do not fit each other. We consider existing language constructs to identify the structures they fit, and we note that language constructs are often designed with little regard for such generality. Finally, we describe a parallel language construct which is designed specifically with the goal of being able to reflect arbitrary problem structures.