Extending C* for Data-Parallel I/O

High-level programming languages, including C* and High-Performance Fortran, do not currently have constructs for parallel i/o. Parallel i/o, if done at all, is performed via vendor specific facilities. We present a brief design for extensions to the data-parallel programming model to support parallel i/o. Our planned extensions are based on the notion of a data-parallel file, which encapsulates a set of i/o streams in a single abstraction. Language constructs supporting this extended programming model will be developed and implemented in the UNH C* compiler. 1 Data-Parallel I/O Primitives Our planned extensions are based on the notion of a data-parallel file, which encapsulates a set of i/o streams in a single abstraction. Each virtual processor provided by the underlying data-parallel programming language has its own file pointer. Each input operation reads a set of values and each output operation writes a set of values. A file on a storage device will consist of both data and cont..