Abstract :
The author considers how the recent release of OpenMP could finally shove parallel software applications out of the domain of high-performance scientific research and analysis, and onto the desktop. By supporting cross-platform, directive-based programming, the OpenMP application programming interface will simplify the development of parallel applications on shared-memory machines. Among other things, this means independent software vendors and other developers can now create parallel code once and run it on different systems, from two-way NT workstations to Unix-based supercomputers with 128 or more processors. The OpenMP specification is a set of compiler directives and callable runtime library routines that take advantage of shared memory multiprocessor (SMP) Unix and NT environments. This version of the OpenMP specification is Fortran-based, due to its widespread use for developing high-performance parallel scientific codes
Keywords :
application program interfaces; message passing; parallel programming; parallelising compilers; shared memory systems; software libraries; software standards; Fortran; NT workstations; OpenMP; Unix-based supercomputers; application programming interface; callable runtime library routines; compiler; cross-platform directive-based programming; high performance parallel scientific codes; message passing; parallel code; parallel software applications; parallel software standard; shared memory multiprocessor; software vendors; specification; ANSI standards; Assembly; Code standards; ISO standards; Laboratories; Message passing; Parallel processing; Programming profession; Proposals; Testing;
