iCetus: A Semi-automatic Parallel Programming Assistant

The iCetus tool is a new interactive parallelizer, providing users with a range of capabilities for the source-to-source transformation of C programs using OpenMP directives in shared memory machines. While the tool can parallelize code fully automatically for non-experts, power users can steer the parallelization process in a menu-driven way. iCetus which is still in its early stages of development is implemented as a web application for easy access, eliminating the need for user installation and updates. The tool supports the user through all phases of the program transformation process, including program analyses, parallelization, and optimization. The first phase includes both static and dynamic analyses, pointing out loops that represent performance bottlenecks and should be improved. The parallelization phase offers diverse options to cater to different levels of user skills. By displaying compiler analyses results in an interactive manner, iCetus supports the user in pinpointing parallelization impediments and resolving them. During the optimization phase, the programmer can apply successive improvements by editing the program, evaluating the performance, and comparing it to that obtained by previous program versions. iCetus also serves as a learning tool to help users understand important program patterns and their parallelization. In this way, it also helps train the user in writing code that likely yields better performance.