ORCHID - A PORTABLE PLATFORM FOR PARALLEL PROGRAMMING

In this paper we present the Orchid system, a new portable and scalabl e platform for parallel programming, suitable for any type of distribu ted memory architecture. It includes C libraries that facilitate dynam ic process allocation, asynchronous process communication, and global process synchronization. It also integrates a set of flexible mechanis ms for the implementation of a wide variety of Distributed Shared Memo ry (DSM) paradigms. As an example, two different DSM paradigms are pro posed. Moreover, a new polyparametric model is suggested, which can be used in the performance evaluation of any DSM paradigm. Orchid has be en successfully used for the development of a large scale application, i.e. an environment for parallel logic programming, based on attribut e grammars.