Engineering topics

Benten, Muhammad S.

Publications and source records attributed to Benten, Muhammad S..

6 records

NASA NTRS1990

Force user's manual: A portable, parallel FORTRAN

The use of Force, a parallel, portable FORTRAN on shared memory parallel computers is described. Force simplifies writing code for parallel computers and, once the parallel code is written, it is easily ported to computers on which Force is installed. Although Force is nearly the same for all computers, specific details are included for the Cray-2, Cray-YMP, Convex 220, Flex/32, Encore, Sequent, Alliant computers on which it is installed.

Jordan, Harry F.↗

NASA NTRS1989

The FORCE: A portable parallel programming language supporting computational structural mechanics

This project supports the conversion of codes in Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM) to a parallel form which will efficiently exploit the computational power available from multiprocessors. The work is a part of a comprehensive, FORTRAN-based system to form a basis for a parallel version of the NICE/SPAR combination which will form the CSM Testbed. The software is macro-based and rests on the force methodology developed by the principal investigator in connection with an early scientific multiprocessor. Machine independence is an important characteristic of the system so that retargeting it to the Flex/32, or any other multiprocessor on which NICE/SPAR might be imnplemented, is well supported. The principal investigator has experience in producing parallel software for both full and sparse systems of linear equations using the force macros. Other researchers have used the Force in finite element programs. It has been possible to rapidly develop software which performs at maximum efficiency on a multiprocessor. The inherent machine independence of the system also means that the parallelization will not be limited to a specific multiprocessor.

Jordan, Harry F.↗

NASA NTRS1989

The FORCE: A highly portable parallel programming language

Here, it is explained why the FORCE parallel programming language is easily portable among six different shared-memory microprocessors, and how a two-level macro preprocessor makes it possible to hide low level machine dependencies and to build machine-independent high level constructs on top of them. These FORCE constructs make it possible to write portable parallel programs largely independent of the number of processes and the specific shared memory multiprocessor executing them.

Jordan, Harry F.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Multiprogramming and the performance of parallel programs

A programming methodology is introduced that utilizes computational synchronization and avoids tight control flow synchronization in parallel programs. In this methodology, each phase of the computation is assigned a status that can be ready, blocked, or completed, and tasks in each computational phase are self-scheduled to ensure computational progress by the available executing processes. Results indicate that this methodology avoids the catastrophic performance losses resulting from the swapping of processes in multiprogrammed multiprocessors.

Benten, Muhammad S.↗

NASA NTRS1989

The FORCE - A highly portable parallel programming language

This paper explains why the FORCE parallel programming language is easily portable among six different shared-memory multiprocessors, and how a two-level macro preprocessor makes it possible to hide low-level machine dependencies and to build machine-independent high-level constructs on top of them. These FORCE constructs make it possible to write portable parallel programs largely independent of the number of processes and the specific shared-memory multiprocessor executing them.

Jordan, Harry F.↗

NASA NTRS1987

Force user's manual, revised

A methodology for writing parallel programs for shared memory multiprocessors has been formalized as an extension to the Fortran language and implemented as a macro preprocessor. The extended language is known as the Force, and this manual describes how to write Force programs and execute them on the Flexible Computer Corporation Flex/32, the Encore Multimax and the Sequent Balance computers. The parallel extension macros are described in detail, but knowledge of Fortran is assumed.

Jordan, Harry F.↗