2008-03-17

• BSP model - bulk synchronous parallel: any two conflicting access to shared variables is ordered by a barrier, referenced in OtherSeminars
• PGAS - parallel global address space, a method of parallel programming, most appropriate to multicore
• SPMD - single program multiple data - programming paradigm used in petsc
• openmp - a series of compiler directives used to parallelize for loops
• UPC - ultra performance C, used on some parallel supercomputers, uses Non-Uniform-Memory-Access and PGAS
• consistency - in a multicore situation, what guarantees can you make about how each processor sees the memory subsystem? The looser the assumptions, the more difficult the code but higher parallelism
• relase consistency - write operations in a critical section are seen when someone gets to that critical section later.
• lazy release consistency - writes are only propagated when the next processor enters the critical section.