SilkRoad II: A multi-paradigm runtime system for cluster computing

A parallel programming paradigm dictates the way an application is to be expressed. It also restricts the algorithms that may be used in the application. Unfortunately, runtime systems for parallel computing often impose a particular programming paradigm. For a wider choice of algorithms, it is desirable to support more than one paradigm. In this paper we propose our work in SilkRoad II, a variant of the Cilk runtime system for cluster computing. What is unique about SilkRoad II is its memory model which supports multiple paradigms with the underlying software distributed shared memory. The RC_dag memory consistency model of SilkRoad H is introduced. Our experimental results show that the stronger RC_dag can achieve performance comparable to LC of Cilk while supporting a bigger set of paradigms with rather good performance.