X10 (programming language)
Encyclopedia
X10 is a programming language
being developed by IBM
at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center
as part of the Productive, Easy-to-use, Reliable Computing System (PERCS
) project funded by DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems
(HPCS) program. Its primary authors are Kemal Ebcioğlu, Vijay Saraswat, and Vivek Sarkar.
X10 is designed specifically for parallel programming using the partitioned global address space
(PGAS) model.
A computation is divided among a set of places, each of which holds some data and hosts one or more activities that operate on those data. It supports a constrained type system for object-oriented programming, as well as user-defined primitive struct types; globally distributed arrays, and structured and unstructured parallelism.
X10 uses the concept of parent and child relationships for activities to prevent the lock stalemate that can occur when two or more processes wait for each other to finish before they can complete. An activity may spawn one or more child activities, which may themselves have children. Children cannot wait for a parent to finish, but a parent can wait for a child using the finish command.
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
being developed by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Thomas J. Watson Research Center
The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for the IBM Research Division.The center is on three sites, with the main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, 38 miles north of New York City, a building in Hawthorne, New York, and offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts.- Overview :The...
as part of the Productive, Easy-to-use, Reliable Computing System (PERCS
PERCS
PERCS , officially known as the Power 775, is IBM's answer to DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems initiative....
) project funded by DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems
High Productivity Computing Systems
High Productivity Computing Systems is a DARPA project for developing a new generation of economically viable high productivity computing systems for national security and industry in the 2002-2010 timeframe....
(HPCS) program. Its primary authors are Kemal Ebcioğlu, Vijay Saraswat, and Vivek Sarkar.
X10 is designed specifically for parallel programming using the partitioned global address space
Partitioned global address space
In computer science, a partitioned global address space is a parallel programming model. It assumes a global memory address space that is logically partitioned and a portion of it is local to each processor. The novelty of PGAS is that the portions of the shared memory space may have an affinity...
(PGAS) model.
A computation is divided among a set of places, each of which holds some data and hosts one or more activities that operate on those data. It supports a constrained type system for object-oriented programming, as well as user-defined primitive struct types; globally distributed arrays, and structured and unstructured parallelism.
X10 uses the concept of parent and child relationships for activities to prevent the lock stalemate that can occur when two or more processes wait for each other to finish before they can complete. An activity may spawn one or more child activities, which may themselves have children. Children cannot wait for a parent to finish, but a parent can wait for a child using the finish command.
See also
- Partitioned global address spacePartitioned global address spaceIn computer science, a partitioned global address space is a parallel programming model. It assumes a global memory address space that is logically partitioned and a portion of it is local to each processor. The novelty of PGAS is that the portions of the shared memory space may have an affinity...
- Unified Parallel CUnified Parallel CUnified Parallel C is an extension of the C programming language designed for high-performance computing on large-scale parallel machines, including those with a common global address space and those with distributed memory...
- Fortress (programming language)
- Co-array FortranCo-array FortranCo-array Fortran , formerly known as F--, is an extension of Fortran 95/2003 for parallel processing created by Robert Numrich and John Reid in 1990s...
- Chapel programming languageChapel programming languageChapel is a new parallel programming language developed by Cray. It is being developed as part of the Cray Cascade project, a participant in DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems program, which has the goal of increasing supercomputer productivity by the year 2010...
- Concurrency (computer science)Concurrency (computer science)In computer science, concurrency is a property of systems in which several computations are executing simultaneously, and potentially interacting with each other...
- Parallel programming modelParallel programming modelA parallel programming model is a concept that enables the expression of parallel programs which can be compiled and executed. The value of a programming model is usually judged on its generality: how well a range of different problems can be expressed and how well they execute on a range of...
- Non-blocking synchronizationNon-blocking synchronizationIn computer science, a non-blocking algorithm ensures that threads competing for a shared resource do not have their execution indefinitely postponed by mutual exclusion...
External links
- X10 language specification
- Introduction to X10 (lecture notes, Fall 2009)
- X10DT setup in Eclipse
- X10 Tutorial (slides)
- X10 user mailing list
- Overview of PGAS languages
- Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming in X10 (course page, Fall 2009)
- Vivek Sarkar's X10 slides
- HPCS program
- GPLed X10 prototype
- A simple streaming example in X10
- FFT in X10
- LU in X10
- HPC and NAS benchmarks