PORTABLE RUN-TIME SUPPORT FOR DYNAMIC OBJECT-ORIENTED PARALLEL-PROCESSING

Mentat is an object-oriented parallel processing system designed to si mplify the task of writing portable parallel programs for parallel mac hines and workstation networks. The Mentat compiler and run-time syste m work together to automatically manage the communication and synchron ization between objects. The run-time system marshalls member function arguments, schedules objects on processors, and dynamically construct s and executes large-grain data dependence graphs. In this article we present the Mentat run-time system. We focus on three aspects-the soft ware architecture, including the interface to the compiler and the str ucture and interaction of the principle components of the run-time sys tem; the run-time overhead on a component-by-component basis for two p latforms, a Sun SparcStation 2 and an Intel Paragon; and an analysis o f the minimum granularity required for application programs to overcom e the run-time overhead.