From BSP to a virtual von Neumann machine

Abstract

The BSP (bulk synchronous parallel) architecture incorporates a scalable and transparent communication model. The task-level synchronisation mechanism of the machine, however, is not transparent to the user and can be inefficient when applied to the co-ordination of irregular parallelism. This article presents a discussion of an alternative memory-level scheme which offers the prospect of achieving both efficient and transparent synchronisation. The scheme, based on a discrete-event simulation paradigm, supports a sequential style of programming and, coupled with the BSP communication model, leads to the emergence of a virtual von Neumann parallel computer.