SuperPascal: a publication language for parallel scientific computing

  • Authors:
  • Per Brinch Hansen

  • Affiliations:
  • Center for Science and Technology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

  • Venue:
  • The origin of concurrent programming
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Parallel computers will not become widely used until scientists and engineers adopt a common programming language for publication of parallel scientific algorithms. This paper describes the publication language SuperPascal by examples. SuperPascal extends Pascal with deterministic statements for parallel processes and synchronous message communication. The language permits unrestricted combinations of recursive procedures and parallel statements. SuperPascal omits ambiguous and insecure features of Pascal. Restrictions on the use of variables enable a single-pass compiler to check that parallel processes are disjoint, even if the processes use procedures with global variables. A portable implementation of SuperPascal has been developed on a Sun workstation under Unix.