Survey of Software Environments for Parallel Distributed Processing: Parallel Programming Education on Real Life Target Systems Using Production Oriented Software Tools

Parallel programming is the future of computer science. Now days shift to parallel processing makes it even more useful. This research effort aims at helping parallelism education on real life target systems, using production oriented software tools. On its beginning, a survey of software environments for parallel programming is presented. The surveyed software environments are categorized according to their main function. An identity is synthesized for each environment by software and project attributes. Based on it and a set of proper criteria there are selected two groups of tools, those of primary and those of secondary interest for this research. An analysis of functional characteristics is performed for both groups. From the first group an open source software environment is chosen as the basis platform that will be enriched with education oriented enhancements. The characteristics analysis is exploited for the proposal of a research and development framework. Its target is the support of parallel programming, on real life target systems, using production oriented software environments.