Steve Bryson

Pictorial Communication in Virtual and Real Environments, by Steve Ellis, Mary Kaiser and Art Grunwald

The state-of-the-art programming of parallel computers is far from being successful. The main challenge today is, therefore, the development of techniques and tools that improve programmers' productivity. Programmability, portability, and reusability are key issues to be solved. In this article we shall report about our ongoing efforts in this direction. After a short discussion of the software dilemma found today, we shall present the Basel approach. We shall summarize our algorithm description methodology and discuss the basic concepts of the proposed skeleton language. An algorithmic example and comments on implementation aspects will explain our work in more detail. We shall summarize the current state of the implementation and conclude with a discussion of related work.

Helmar Burkhart

Robert Frank

Guido H&#xE4;chler

Structured Parallel Programming: How Informatics Can Help Overcome the Software Dilemma

Research in scientitic programming enables us to realize more and more complex applications, and on the other hand, application-driven demands on computing methods and power are continuously growing. Therefore, interdisciplinary approaches become more widely used. The interdisciplinary SPINET project presented in this article applies modern scientific computing tools to biomechanical simulations: parallel computing and symbolic and modern functional programming. The target application is the human spine. Simulations of the spine help us to investigate and better understand the mechanisms of back pain and spinal injury. Two approaches have been used: the first uses the finite element method for high-performance simulations of static biomechanical models, and the second generates a simulation developmenttool for experimenting with different dynamic models. A finite element program for static analysis has been parallelized for the MUSIC machine. To solve the sparse system of linear equations, a conjugate gradient solver (iterative method) and a frontal solver (direct method) have been implemented. The preprocessor required for the frontal solver is written in the modern functional programming language SML, the solver itself in C, thus exploiting the characteristic advantages of both functional and imperative programming. The speedup analysis of both solvers show very satisfactory results for this irregular problem. A mixed symbolic-numeric environment for rigid body system simulations is presented. It automatically generates C code from a problem specification expressed by the Lagrange formalism using Maple.

Peter G. Kropf

Edgar F. A. Lederer

Thomas Steffen

Karl Guggisberg

Jean-Guy Schneider

Peter Schwab

SPINET: A Parallel Computing Approach to Spine Simulations

This article critically examines current parallel programming practice and optimizing compiler development. The general strategies employed by compiler and programmer to optimize a Fortran program are described, and then illustrated for a specific case by applying them to a well-known scientific program, TRED2, using the KSR-1 as the target architecture. Extensive measurement is applied to the resulting versions of the program, which are compared with a version produced by a commercial optimizing compiler, KAP. The compiler strategy significantly outperforms KAP and does not fall far short of the performance achieved by the programmer. Following the experimental section each approach is critiqued by the other. Perceived flaws, advantages, and common ground are outlined, with an eye to improving both schemes.

M. F. P. O'Boyle

J. M. Bull

Expert Programmer versus Parallelizing Compiler: A Comparative Study of Two Approaches for Distributed Shared Memory

Professionals in various fields such as medical imaging, biology, and civil engineering require rapid access to huge amounts of pixmap image data. Multimedia interfaces further increase the need for large image databases. To fulfill these requirements, the GigaView parallel image server architecture relies on arrays of intelligent disk nodes, each disk node being composed of one processor and one disk. This contribution reviews the design of the GigaView hardware and file system, compares it to other storage servers available on the market, and evaluates fields of applications for the architecture.

B. A. Gennart

B. Krummenacher

L. Landron

R. D. Hersch

B. Saugy

J.-C. Hadorn

D. M&#xFC;ller

The Giga View Multiprocessor Multidisk Image Server

A multi-model neural-network computer has been designed and built. A compute-intensive application in the field of power-system monitoring, using the Kohonen neural network, has then been ported onto this machine. After a short description of the system, this article focuses on the programming paradigm adopted. The performance of the machine is also evaluated and discussed.

Thierry Cornu

Paolo Ienne

Dagmar Niebur

Patrick Thiran

Marc A. Viredaz

Design, Implementation, and Test of a Multi-Model Systolic Neural-Network Accelerator

The Swiss Priority Programme in Informatics Research, Module Parallelism: Guest Editor's Introduction

At the Electronics Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Z&#xfc;rich, the high-performance parallel supercomputer MUSIC (MUlti processor System with Intelligent Communication) has been developed. As applications like neural network simulation and molecular dynamics show, the Electronics Laboratory supercomputer is absolutely on par with those of conventional supercomputers, but electric power requirements are reduced by a factor of 1,000, weight is reduced by a factor of 400, and price is reduced by a factor of 100. Software development is a key issue of such parallel systems. This article focuses on the programming environment of the MUSIC system and on its applications.

A. Gunzinger

B. B&#xc4;umle

M. Frey

M. Klebl

M. Kocheisen

P. Kohler

R. Morel

U. M&#x00FC;ller

M. Rosenthal

Programming Environment for a High-Performance Parallel Supercomputer with Intelligent Communication

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Scientific Programming provides a forum for research results in, and practical experience with, software engineering environments, tools, languages, and models of computation aimed specifically at supporting scientific and engineering computing.

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Chief Editor&nbsp;Professor Tramontana&nbsp;is based at the University of Catania and his research primarily concerns the areas of software engineering and distributed systems.

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Scientific Programming

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