Parallel discrete event processing of sequential computations

Previous proposals for the application of discrete event methods to parallelization of sequential software have been based on the optimistic execution strategy. We present a new method which avoids optimistic execution. This is motivated by the observation that the control structure of a sequential program constitutes a temporal coordinate system which is exogenous to the program execution. The method employs a logical time mechanism and provides adaptive synchronisation for the distributed execution. Hence data dependent and/or conditional parallelism is released without the risk of coherency violation. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the parallel discrete event simulation paradigm. The efficient coarse grain mapping of conventional programs onto this paradigm is then discussed.