Programming Model

Object-based program design

• Express algorithms and program designs using objects
• Decompose computation into interacting object collections
• Write native C++ code
• Use all C++ capabilities (OO, generics etc)

Globally addressable objects

• Some classes are elevated into global visibility
• Objects of these classes can be addressed from any processor
• Parallel control flow primarily involves these globally visible objects

Globally invocable methods

• Some methods of globally visible classes are also elevated into global visibility
• Only these methods of a globally visible object can be invoked from any processor

Asynchronous methods

• Objects in computation interact using method invocations
• Do not return any data
• Method invocation does not block
• No promise of immediate execution

Object collections

• Collections of objects of a given type can be created, managed and addressed collectively
• Collections are indexed
• Each object in collection is globally visible. can be addressed via the tuple of collection handle and object index.
• Method invocations on such collections are implicit broadcasts to all objects

Object placement

• Easily control placement of objects on processors

Migratable / serializable objects

• Objects can be migrated
• Any data in program can be migrated
• Simply needs a serialization function

Decompose data across object collection

• Typical data decomposition is by decomposing the data across multiple objects of a single class
• Massively parallel computations on each portion of the data can be performed by simply invoking methods on the whole collection

Decompose data manipulation across methods

Easily task parallelism