Portable Parallel Programs

Thomas Gross
ETH Zurich

Abstract

The proliferation of all kinds of parallel systems (multi-core and many-core CPUs, heterogenous and homogenous multi-processing platforms) promises to provide many options for application experts ("users" of computers). Unfortunately many of these systems require substantial investment in customizing a program for efficient execution -- a task that users often are not prepared (or inclined) to accept. Abstractions and tools to help the users are in short supply. In this talk we attempt to first assess the situation and then present some approaches to simplify the user's interactions with parallel systems.