Sun Studio Topics

Two critical forces are shaping the direction of software development. One is the deep adoption of parallel computing. The other is the move toward Service Oriented Architecture. The current technologies of chip multiprocessor (CMP) and chip multithreading (CMT) processor design, horizontal-scaled systems, near zero latency interconnects, and new web service standards all accelerate both forces into reality and adoption everywhere. It is quite easy to predict that most desktop machines or even laptops will be powered by multi-core or CMT processors over next few years. But how prepared are the software developers and tool vendors for the challenge of working in parallel computing environments?

The scientific and engineering communities adopted parallel computing to solve their large scale complex problems a long time ago. But parallel programming development has always been quite challenging, even for advanced black-belt developers. This also raises more difficult issues of productivity, scalability and reliability. The challenges of parallel computing are not new to Sun. With Sun Studio software, the developer has a complete set of tools and an integrated environment for high performance parallel computing.

TUTORIAL: An Introduction to Parallel Computing

Ruud van der Pas discusses tuning for performance and the challenges brought on by today's new chip architectures in this seven-part series.

Click on the image to go to the tutorial pages.

• Performance Tuning
• Multicore Processor Architectures
• Parallel Architectures
• Parallel Programming Basics
• Parallel Programming Models: Distrubuted Memory and MPI
• Parallel Programming Models: Shared Memory, Auto Parallel and OpenMP
• Hybrid Programming Models, and What's Next.

What About Throughput Computing and Multi-Core Environments?

• Throughput Computing
  Changing the Economics and Ecology of the Data Center with Innovative SPARC Technology - Sun Whitepaper (PDF).
• Improving Application Efficiency Through Chip Multithreading
  Nagendra Nagarajayya on introducing CMT technology, such as chip multi-processing and simultaneous multi-threading, from a software developer's perspective.
• Comparison Of Chip Multithreading and Chip Multiprocessing
  Erik Fischer on increasing microprocessor performance by on-chip resource replication
• Concurrent Programming is Here!
  Don Kretsch on why application developers should care about multi-core processors.
• Developing and Tuning Applications on UltraSPARC T1 Chip Multithreading Systems
  Denis Sheahan's Sun Blueprint paper on the multi-core UltraSPARC T1 processor (PDF).
• AMD: Multi-Core Architecture
  Whitepaper from AMD on the evolution, implications, and advantages of multi-core processors (PDF).

OpenMP - Shared Memory Programming Model

• OpenMP.org Website
  The OpenMP Application Program Interface (API) supports multi-platform shared-memory parallel programming in C/C++ and Fortran on all architectures, including Unix platforms and Windows NT platforms. Jointly defined by a group of major computer hardware and software vendors, OpenMP is a portable, scalable model that gives shared-memory parallel programmers a simple and flexible interface for developing parallel applications for platforms ranging from the desktop to the supercomputer.
• OpenMP API Specifications
  The official OpenMP API specifications can be downloaded from this site in PDF or HTML.
• Article: Sun Studio Support for OpenMP
  This paper presents an overview of the OpenMP model of computation, and describes OpenMP support in the Sun Studio compilers and tools.
• Article: Detecting and Avoiding OpenMP Race Conditions in C++
  This article discusses some common scenarios that cause data race conditions in C++ and provides easy coding alternatives to avoid them.
• Sun Studio: OpenMP API User's Guide
  The current Sun Studio compiler documentation for OpenMP.

MPI - Distributed Memory Programming Model

• The Message Passing Interface (MPI) Standard
  The MPI home pages from Argonne National Labs.
• MPICH Home Page
  MPICH provides an MPI implementation for important platforms, including clusters, SMPs, and massively parallel processors.
• LAM/MPI Parallel Computing
  LAM/MPI is a high-quality open-source implementation of the Message Passing Interface specification, including all of MPI-1.2 and much of MPI-2.
• MPICH Implementation on Solaris 10 by APSTC
• MVAPICH: MPI Over InfiniBand Project
  This web page focuses on research and development of high performance and scalable designs for MPI-1 and MPI-2 on InfiniBand as well as other RDMA-enabled interconnects.
• Open Source MPI Project
  Open MPI is a project combining technologies and resources from several other projects (FT-MPI, LA-MPI, LAM/MPI, and PACX-MPI) in order to build the best MPI library available. A completely new MPI-2 compliant implementation, Open MPI offers advantages for system and software vendors, application developers and computer science researchers.

Sun Resources For High Performance Parallel Computing

• The Sun HPC Community Wiki
• HPC Developer Resources
• Sun HPC ClusterTools
  Sun HPC ClusterTools software is an integrated toolkit that allows developers to create and tune MPI applications that run on clusters and SMPs.
• Sun Studio: Lock_Lint - Static Data Race and Deadlock Detection Tool for C
  The command-line utility lock_lint analyzes the use of mutex and multiple readers/single writer locks, and reports on inconsistent use of these locking techniques that may lead to data races and deadlocks in multi-threaded applications.

Important Software Development Issues

• The Challenge Of Developing Applications For Parallel Computing
• The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurreny in Software, Herb Sutter, March 2005, Dr. Dobbs

Community, Education and Support

• Sun HPC Community Wiki
  A community wiki designed for information sharing and collaboration on High Performance Computing topics.
• The OpenMP Community
  cOMPunity is the community of OpenMP researchers and developers in academia and industry. It is a forum for the dissemination and exchange of information about OpenMP. cOMPunity is also a forum for discussing our experiences with this programming API and for debating ideas that might improve it.
• OpenSolaris