Multicore Software Technologies A survey

For decades, parallel computers were synonymous with supercomputers, large and expensive machines built by companies like Cray and IBM, affordable only to government laboratories and large corporations. Only expert programmers were able to effectively use these systems. In the 1990s, two parallel programming standards grew to dominate the parallel computing landscape: the Message Passing Interface (MPI) [1] and Open Multiprocessing (OpenMP) [2]. MPI and OpenMP simplified development of parallel applications by promoting portable, open standards over multiple proprietary technologies. Nevertheless, MPI and OpenMP still required an indepth understanding of parallel computing. © 2009 IEEE.