The Nexus task-parallel runtime system

A runtime system provides a parallel language compiler with an interface to the low-level facilities required to support interaction between concurrently executing program components. Nexus is a portable runtime system for task-parallel programming languages. Distinguishing features of Nexus include its support for multiple threads of control, dynamic processor acquisition, dynamic address space creation, a global memory model via interprocessor references, and asynchronous events. In addition, it supports heterogeneity at multiple levels, allowing a single computation to utilize different programming languages, executables, processors, and network protocols. Nexus is currently being used as a compiler target for two task-parallel languages: Fortran M and Compositional C++. In this paper, we present the Nexus design, outline techniques used to implement Nexus on parallel computers, show how it is used in compilers, and compare its performance with that of another runtime system