Language bindings for a data-parallel runtime

The NPAC kernel runtime, developed in the PCRC (Parallel Compiler Runtime Consortium) project, is a runtime library with special support for the High Performance Fortran data model. It provides array descriptors for a generalized class of HPF like distributed arrays, support for parallel access to their elements, and a rich library of collective communication and arithmetic operations for manipulating these arrays. The library has been successfully used as a component in experimental HPF translation systems. With prospects for early appearance of fully featured, efficient HPF compilers looking questionable, we discuss a class of more easily implementable data parallel language extensions that preserve many of the attractive features of HPF, while providing the programmer with direct access to runtime libraries such as the NPAC PCRC kernel.