Experimental evaluation of QSM: a simple shared-memory model

Parallel programming models should attempt to satisfy two conflicting goals. On one hand, they should hide architec-tural details so that algorithm designers can write simple, portable programs. On the other hand, models must expose architectural details so that designers can evaluate and op-timize the performance of their algorithms. In this paper, we experimentally examine the trade-offs made by a simple shared-memory model, QSM, to address this dilemma. The results indicate that analysis under the QSM model yields quite accurate results for reasonable input sizes and that al-gorithms developed under QSM achieve performance close to that obtainable through more complex models, such as BSP and LogP.