The parallel cellular programming model

We present a synchronous parallel programming model designed for massively parallel fine grained applications such as cellular automata, finite element methods or partial differential equations. In this model we assume that the number of parallel processes in a program is much larger than the number of processors of the machine on which it is run. We present the computational model and the communication model. We introduce the virtual cellular machine, an abstract machine implementing this programming model which requires means to simulate efficiently the execution of many processes on a single processor; and to use the available communication bandwidth efficiently. Finally, we show an example program written in a prototype language designed for programming the virtual machine.