An analysis of message passing systems for distributed memory computers

Analyses three of the most widely used message passing environments for parallel systems, namely Occam/TDS for Transputer based systems, Vertex-Vortex for nCUBE, and Express, which is an architecture-independent message passing system. The aim of our analysis is to contrast the features provided by the different systems, and from among them to select the most suitable one with respect to some criteria, i.e. program portability, efficiency and flexibility of the message passing system. Program portability should ensure that we will be able to use tomorrow, on new parallel architectures, today´s parallel software, thus preserving our investment. Efficiency of the application is a must for parallel software. With flexibility, we intend that the message passing system is able to accommodate different parallel programming paradigms (such as pipelined, data parallel) in a natural way. The use of a general-purpose message passing system, like those considered, is also contrasted with the use of an application-oriented high-level notation