A Study of Performance on SMP and Distributed Memory Architectures Using a Shared Memory Programming Model

We examine the use of a shared memory programming model to address the problem of portability between distributed memory and shared memory architectures. We conduct this evaluation by extending an existing programming model, the Parallel C Preprocessor, with a type qualifier interpretation of the data sharing keywords borrowed from the Split-C and AC compilers. We evaluate the performance of the resulting programming model on a wide range of shared memory and distributed memory computing platforms using several numerical algorithms as benchmarks. We find the type-qualifier-based programming model capable of efficient execution on distributed memory and shared memory architectures.