PARC - AN EXTENSION OF C FOR SHARED-MEMORY PARALLEL-PROCESSING

ParC is an extension of the C programming language with block-oriented parallel constructs that allow the programmer to express fine-grain p arallelism in a shared-memory model, It is suitable for the expression of parallel shared-memory algorithms, and also conducive for the para llelization of sequential C programs. In addition, performance enhanci ng transformations can be applied within the language, without resorti ng to low-level programming, The language includes closed constructs t o create parallelism, as well as instructions to cause the termination of parallel activities and to enforce synchronization. The parallel c onstructs are used to define the scope of shared variables, and also t o delimit the sets of activities that are influenced by termination or synchronization instructions. The semantics of parallelism are discus sed, especially relating to the discrepancy between the limited number of physical processors and the potentially much larger number of para llel activities in a program.