[fpc-devel] Parallel Computing

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Florian Klaempfl wrote:

>> It is common in the scientistware I benchmark daily. The evil geniuses 
>> parallelize their applications by placing a some OpenMP hints in their 
>> source code.
> 
> Yes, but only some loops. But just imagine how OpenMP could help in
> parallelization of the compiler? It can't imo.

But in fairness a compiler is neither more nor less specialist than heavy 
numbercrunching code. OpenMP parallel procedures should, as one particular 
simple example, be able to improve Mandelbrot speed significantly since there 
is minimal interaction between the areas being calculated.

There's lots more people running big finite difference or TLM models than are 
doing systems programming. Getting them interested in a language that is more 
friendly than C or FORTRAN would be to everybody's advantage.

I've got some cellular automaton stuff that I want to look at, and while 
explicit threads are probably the way to go having implicit parallelisation 
would be a very interesting alternative.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]