The Data-Parallel Programming Model: a Semantic Perspective

Computing Model = Execution Model + Programming Model In the world of sequential computing, much work has been done to understand and get advantage of this dichotomy. The usual execution model is the Von Neumann model: contents of memory locations are repeatedly loaded, combined and stored back by the processor. On the other hand, many programming models have been proposed. Early programming languages such as Fortran derive from a model very close to the Von Neumann execution model. The Pascal language introduced a more abstract "structured programming" model. Programming models derived from non-operational approach have also proven fruitful: logic programming (e.g., Prolog), functional programming (e.g., Lisp, Scheme and ML), object-oriented programming (e.g., C++ and Eiffel). In all case, a compiler (sometimes interpreter) has to map statements of the programming model into the execution model while preserving the semantics and maximizing efficiency 1 . As one can observe a genera..