Language and Visualization Support for Large-Scale Concurrency

SDL (Shared Dataspace Language) is a language for writing and visualizing programs consisting of thousands of processes executing on a highly-parallel multiprocessor. SDL is based on a model in which processes use powerful transactions to manipulate abstract views of a virtual, content-addressable data structure called the dataspace. The process society is dynamic and supports varying degrees of process anonymity. The transactions are executed over abstract views of the dataspace. This facilitates elegant conceptualization of dataspace transformations and compact program representation. Processes and transactions enable SDL to combine elements of both large and fine grained concurrency. The view is a novel abstraction mechanism whose significance is derived from the fact that it allows processes to interrogate the dataspace at a level of abstraction convenient for the test they are pursuing. The view also plays a role in the definition of continuously updated, programmer-defined visual abstractions which enable exploration of the program\u27s functionality and performance