Comparing Some Approaches to Programming Distributed Memory Machines

Abstract

We show that programs written for the SIMD machine model are equivalent to a special form of barrier MIMD programs. This form is called CPP. The CPP form is also produced when compiling functional languages like Crystal and Sapphire. CPP programs may be executed on MIMD computers without any need for global synchronization and little or no communication overhead, probably with a gain in execution speed as a result. This raises a challenge to construct MIMD computers with many processors and Eow-cost communication in order to ful ly utilize this potential.