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A graphical dataflow meta-language for asynchronous distributed programming
Authors
	Klimov A.V.
	Okunev A.S.
Date of publication
	2016
Abstract
	There exist a variety of programming paradigms for development of parallel software. Each paradigm dictates its own requirements on the structure of the algorithm, which in practice means the need to develop an algorithm within each paradigm almost from scratch. We propose a new language in which one will be able to write an algorithm just once, and then to systematically derive efficient code in different programming paradigms. The language is intended for writing asynchronous distributed algorithms and is based on the dataflow principle: an operation fires when all its arguments are ready. We have extended the classical dataflow paradigm by adding a node indexing, which radically changed the very style of programming. We also propose a graphical form of the language which makes it easier to learn and use. The language is explained by simple examples. We show how indexing helps to express complex data structures, compound operations, allows to flexibly manage the distribution of computations. The concepts of scatter paradigm and gather paradigm are introduced, which help to classify programming languages and styles. In gather paradigm the consumer points out the sources of its input arguments, while in less familiar scatter paradigm inherent to our language the producer of a data points out all its consumers. We claim that scatter paradigm better fits the domain of distributed programming. The paper also provides a comparison of our project with existing systems and approaches including LabVIEW and Active Messages.
Keywords
	graphical programming, asynchronous distributed computing, meta-language, dataflow computation model, indexing, information structure of algorithm, LabVIEW, Active Messages, scatter paradigm, gather paradigm.
Library reference
	Klimov A.V., Okunev A.S. A graphical dataflow meta-language for asynchronous distributed programming // Problems of Perspective Micro- and Nanoelectronic Systems Development - 2016. Proceedings / edited by A. Stempkovsky, Moscow, IPPM RAS, 2016. Part 2. P. 151-158.
URL of paper
	http://www.mes-conference.ru/data/year2016/pdf/D149.pdf