Explicit SIMD programming for asynchronous applications

This paper presents the SIMD Phase Programming Model, a simple approach to solving asynchronous, irregular problems on massively parallel SIMD computers. The novelty of this model consists of a simple, clear method on how to turn a general serial program into an explicitly parallel one for a SIMD machine, transferring a portion of the flow control into the single PEs. Three case studies (the Mandelbrot Set, the N-Queen problem, and a Hopfield neural network that approximates the maximum clique in a graph) will be presented, implemented on two different SIMD computers (the UCSC Kestrel and the MasPar MP-2). Our results so far show good performance with respect to conventional serial CPU computing time and in terms of the high parallel speedup and efficiency achieved.