Programming at the processor-memory-switch level

Users of networks of heterogeneous processors are concerned with allocating specialized resources to tasks of medium to large size. They need to create processes, which are instances of tasks, allocate these processes to processors, and specify the communication patterns between processes. These activities constitute processor-memory-switch (PMS)-level programming. The authors describe the use of PMS-level programming in computation-intensive, real-time applications, e.g. vision, robotics, and vehicular control, that require efficient concurrent execution of multiple tasks, e.g. sensor data collection, obstacle recognition, and global path planning, devoted to specific pieces of the application. They discuss the programming of heterogeneous machines and present the Durra language and tools, which they are developing to support PMS-level programming