Hiding architectures [parallel programming environments]

All now agree that massively parallel computing environments are here to stay, and that the benefits of scalable power which they provide over-ride the additional effort needed to program them. However, all also agree that this additional effort is still far from negligible. Worse, the additional effort must be repeated for each new system to which a parallel code is ported: parallel codes today are less portable, even when written wholly in high level languages, than codes written in the early 1960s. With the great leap forward into parallelism has come a great leap back in programming environments. The author looks at the tools available for writing code which will run effectively on as wide a range of current and proposed future parallel architectures, as possible