Exploring HPCS Languages in Scientific Computing

Journal Article · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2008 · Journal of Physics Conference Series

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/125/1/012034· OSTI ID:1035817

Barrett, Richard F ^[1]; Alam, Sadaf R ^[1]; de Almeida, Valmor F ^[1]; Bernholdt, David E ^[1]; Elwasif, Wael R ^[1]; Kuehn, Jeffery A ^[1]; Poole, Stephen W ^[1]; Shet, Aniruddha G ^[1]

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1. ORNL

As computers scale up dramatically to tens and hundreds of thousands of cores, develop deeper computational and memory hierarchies, and increased heterogeneity, developers of scientific software are increasingly challenged to express complex parallel simulations effectively and efficiently. In this paper, we explore the three languages developed under the DARPA High-Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program to help address these concerns: Chapel, Fortress, and X10. These languages provide a variety of features not found in currently popular HPC programming environments and make it easier to express powerful computational constructs, leading to new ways of thinking about parallel programming. Though the languages and their implementations are not yet mature enough for a comprehensive evaluation, we discuss some of the important features, and provide examples of how they can be used in scientific computing. We believe that these characteristics will be important to the future of high-performance scientific computing, whether the ultimate language of choice is one of the HPCS languages or something else.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
• Sponsoring Organization: ORNL LDRD Director's R&D
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1035817
• Journal Information: Journal of Physics Conference Series, Journal Name: Journal of Physics Conference Series Vol. 125; ISSN 1742-6596
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

parallel computing
programming languages
scientific computing