G.: The Pilot approach to cluster programming

Abstract—The Pilot library offers a new method for program-ming parallel clusters in C. Formal elements from Communi-cating Sequential Processes (CSP) were used to realize a process/channel model of parallel computation that reduces opportunities for deadlock and other communication errors. This simple model, plus an application programming interface (API) fashioned on C’s formatted I/O, are designed to make the library easy for novice scientific C programmers to learn. Optional runtime services including deadlock detection help the programmer to debug communication issues. Pilot forms a thin layer on top of standard Message Passing Interface (MPI), pre-serving the latter’s portability and efficiency, with little perfor-mance impact. MPI’s powerful collective operations can still be accessed within the conceptual model. Keywords—MPI; library; parallel programming; deadlock detection; CSP I