The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing
August 25, 2006
HPCS Languages Move Forward: A Q&A with Rusty Lusk
1 | 2 All »
In July, Oak Ridge National Laboratory hosted an HPCS (High-Productivity Computing System) Language Workshop to discuss the status of the next-generation HPC languages -- Chapel (Cray), X10 (IBM) and Fortress (Sun Microsystems) -- being developed by the three DARPA HPCS Phase II vendors. Workshop attendees discussed design and compiler/runtime implementation issues associated with the three entries as well as how the language component of HPCS would evolve as Phase II of the program comes to a conclusion.
HPCwire got the opportunity to ask Rusty Lusk, one of the HPCS Language Workshop principle organizers and the Acting Division Director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, about the current state of the HPCS language effort and about some of the challenges that lie ahead as the program enters Phase III.
HPCwire: The DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) project is set to enter Phase III soon. Can you tell us a bit about the language component of the project?
Rusty Lusk: DARPA's approach to increasing productivity in HPC application development involved both a new generation of machines and a new compute language, intended to work together. The language project has produced three prototypes: X10 from IBM, Fortress from Sun, and Chapel from Cray. Each contains innovative concepts designed to make it easer to write scalable parallel programs.
HPCwire: What is the current state of the HPCS languages: X10, Chapel, and Fortress?
Lusk: DARPA sponsored a small workshop this summer at which the three HPCS vendors -- Cray, IBM, and Sun -- presented frank reports on the current state of their language development projects. I was impressed by the progress each of them has made in the past year. They have moved beyond conceptual design to a nearly finalized syntax and are proceeding with implementation of the compiler, runtime libraries, and tools necessary to make a language viable.
They face a difficult challenge. Successful new languages are rare, and DARPA has commissioned these to take particular advantage of the HPCS machines, prototypes of which have not yet appeared. While these machines will provide hardware support for advanced languages such as these, there must also be a way to use the new languages on a wide class of parallel machines, or else a critical mass of users will never materialize.
HPCwire: What are the vendor plans for their languages through December 2007?
Lusk: DARPA is supporting all three independent language development efforts through the end of 2007, as the overall HPCS project transitions to Phase III. By the end of next year, the vendors expect to have final public versions of their syntax and semantics and to have prototype implementations available on current platforms so that applications can begin experimentation with them. These implementations may not provide every feature in the new languages, but they will enable application developers to get a feel for the extent to which the new languages enhance productivity.
HPCwire: What requirements do applications have for new programming languages?
Page: 1 of 21 | 2 All »
Article Tools
Share Options
(Digg, Technorati, more)
Subscribe
Sponsored Links
RSS Feeds
Feeds by Topic
- Applications
- Developer Tools
- Interconnects
- Middleware
- Networks
- Processors
- Storage
- Systems
- Visualization
Feeds by Industry
Feeds by Content Type
Top Headlines
3D Seismic Data: Taking a Smarter Approach to Interpretation
Jul 09 | Engineer Live | The demand for computational tools to underpin the 3D seismic interpretation process has never been more apparent. Read more...
Engineering Unemployment Soared in 2Q to 8.6%
Jul 08 | EE Times | Unemployment for U.S. engineers has reached record levels, according to government figures. Read more...
Gartner Adjusts 2009 IT Spend Downward Again
Jul 08 | Network World | Global spending for 2009 projected to drop 6 percent, for a total of $3.2 trillion. Read more...
Concurrent and Parallel Are Not The Same
Jul 08 | Linux Magazine | Portability or efficiency? Neither is guaranteed when writing explicit parallel code. Read more...
800 TFLOP Real-Time Ray Tracing GPU Unveiled, Not for Gamers
Jul 07 | Ars Technica | Japanese company builds custom ASIC to accelerate real-time ray traced rendering for the auto industry. Read more...
Featured Whitepapers
Building High Performance Computing in a Green and Modular Solution Building Block
Apr 14 | | Many HPC IT departments are feeling the rising pressure to deliver more capacity computing and performance while trying to reduce the total cost of ownership. This white paper discusses how an environmentally-friendly and open-standards HPC building block based computing system using flexible interconnect options helps address capacity computing needs.
Multimedia
Webcast: Dell Expands HPC Access and Adoption with Intel Cluster Ready Program
Source: Addison Snell, GM/VP, Tabor Research; sponsored by Dell
Many organizations that could benefit from the use of HPC clusters find that it is complicated to get the systems up and running because of limited IT resources or the complexities of the clusters themselves. Learn how the Intel Cluster Ready program, for which Dell was an original partner, seeks to address this challenge for entry level and mid-range HPC users.
Video White Paper: Architecting a Better Network Storage Solution
BlueArc's Titan architecture represents an evolutionary step in file servers by creating a hardware-based file system that can scale bandwidth, IOPS, and overall data capacity well beyond conventional software-based devices. With its ability to virtualize a massive storage pool of up to four usable petabytes of tiered storage, Titan can scale with growing data requirements, offering a competitive advantage for businesses, researchers, or other enterprises seeking to better manage data growth while still ensuring optimal performance.
Webcast: HPC Development Solutions: Sun Studio & Sun HPC ClusterTools
Sun Studio Compilers and Tools and Sun HPC ClusterTools allow you to create high performance parallel applications for OpenSolaris, Solaris and Linux. Sun Studio Express 11/08 includes MPI performance analysis capabilities and full OpenMP 3.0 compiler support. Learn about all this and the latest in Sun HPC ClusterTools 8.1.
Newsletters
Stay informed! Subscribe to HPCwire email Newsletters.
HPC Job Bank
-
HPC Systems Administrator
McGill University -
High Performance Computing Data Center Manager
National Renewable Energy Laboratory -
High Performance Computing Systems Administrator
Idaho National Laboratory -
Solution Engineer- HPC
Dell Inc -
Parallel Programmer
Cardiff University -
Principal Software Research Engineer
Indiana University -
Post Doctoral Researcher - Exascale Stream Computing
IBM - Visit the HPCwire Job Bank
Featured Events
-
July 13-16, 2009
WORLDCOMP'09
Las Vegas , NV
USA
-
August 24-28, 2009
Data Mining: Levels I, II, & III
Denver , CO
USA