Distributed Data Access in AC

Abstract

We have modified the C language to support a programming model based on a shared address space with physically distributed memory. With this model users can write programs in which the nodes of a massively parallel processor can access remote memory without message passing. AC provides support for distributed arrays as well as pointers to distributed data. Simple array references and pointer dereferencing are sufficient to generate low-overhead remote reads and writes. We have implemented these ideas in a compiler based on the GNU C compiler and targeted at Cray Research's T3D. Initial performance measurements show that AC generates code for remote accesses which is considerably faster than that of the native compiler for structures up to about 16 words in size and virtually equivalent for larger transfers.