Extending Vienna Fortran with task parallelism

Abstract

Vienna Fortran supports a wide range of data-parallel numerical problems. However, a significant number of scientific and engineering applications are of a multi-disciplinary and heterogeneous nature and thus do not fit well into the data parallel paradigm. In this paper we present new language extensions to fill this gap. Tasks can be spawned as asynchronous activities in a homogeneous or heterogeneous computing environment; they interact by sharing access to Shared Data Abstractions (SDAs). SDAs are an extension of Fortran 90 modules, representing a pool of common data, together with a set of methods for controlled access to these data and a mechanism for providing persistent storage. These extensions support the integration of data and task parallelism and can be used to express task parallel applications in a natural and efficient way.