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Abstract:

Most of the subjects described in this document are related to the EARTH project, which has been central to the research in the ACAPS (Advanced Compilers, Architectures and Parallel Systems) Lab in the last few years. The EARTH (Efficient Architecture for Running THreads) programming model is based on the concept of multithreading and attempts to provide an efficient and simple programming environment for parallel machines. The EARTH-MANNA system implements the EARTH programming model on top of MANNA, a distributed-memory machine. Each node of the MANNA machine consists of two Intel i860XP CPUs, 32 MB DRAM and a fast network interface. The EARTH programming model is implemented as an extension to the C language: Threaded-C. It supports accesses to any memory location in the machine, remote function execution and dynamic load balancing. Another parallel programming language, EARTH-C, that hides most of the low-level details of the underlying parallel system, has been implemented as part of our research. SEMi (Simulator for the EARTH, MANNA and i860) is a tool developed in the ACAPS Lab to simulate the behavior of various i860-based machines, including MANNA. It is a modular simulator similar in usage to DLXsim, except that it simulates a real processor, the i860XP. It simulates at a greater level of detail than DLXsim in an attempt to get timing information close to the real machine. Functional correctness of SEMi has been verified by comparing code run on the simulator and on MANNA. Mentors The projects described in the following sections touch many areas of our research at ACAPS. For that reason, not everybody in the lab will be able to answer all your questions. Some of the knowledgeable people you might want to ask are not even at McGill any more, as many members of the EARTH team moved to the University of Delaware, together with Prof. Gao. The following list enumerates the people you might want to ask for advice, together with their areas of competence:

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