High-level directives to drive the allocation of parallel object-oriented applications

The paper presents the Abstract Configuration Language (ACL) implemented within the Parallel Objects object oriented parallel programming environment. ACL defines a set of directives that allow users to specify the allocation needs of his/her application components without being aware of the architectural details. ACL directives drive the allocation decisions of the run time support, by adapting its general purpose behaviour to follow an applications particular allocation needs. The effectiveness of the ACL approach in increasing the performances of parallel applications is confirmed by a testbed application.