BOS is Boss: A Case for Bulk-Synchronous Object Systems

M. Goudreau, K. Lang, G. Narlikar and S. Rao

To appear in the Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual ACM Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), June 1999.

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Abstract:

A key issue for parallel systems is the development of useful programming abstractions that can coexist with good performance. We describe a communication library that supports an object-based abstraction with a bulk-synchronous communication style; this is the first time such a library has been proposed and implemented. By restricting the library to the exclusive use of barrier synchronization, we are able to design a simple and easy-to-use object system. By exploiting established techniques based on the bulk-synchronous parallel (BSP) model, we are able to design algorithms and library implementations that work well across platforms.

@inproceedings	{GoudreauSpaa99,
author		= "M.Goudreau, K. Lang, G. Narlikar and S. Rao",
title		= "BOS is Boss: A Case for Bulk-Synchronous Object Systems",
booktitle	= "Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual ACM Symposium on 
			Parallel Algorithms and Architectures",
year		= 1999,
month		= "June"
}

Girija Narlikar