Program Control Language: a programming language for adaptive distributed applications

Many distributed applications must meet stringent performance requirements even when the performance characteristics of the underlying systems and networks vary significantly at runtime. Runtime adaptation can be used to tolerate such changes, but sophisticated adaptive distributed programs can be e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of parallel and distributed computing Vol. 63; no. 11; pp. 1082 - 1104
Main Authors: Ensink, Brian, Stanley, Joel, Adve, Vikram
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier Inc 01.11.2003
Subjects:
Adaptive
Computational grid
Distributed
Parallel computing
Performance metric
Program control language
Runtime system
Task graph
Computational grid
Parallel computing
Adaptive
Performance metric
Distributed
Task graph
Runtime system
Program control language
ISSN:0743-7315, 1096-0848
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Many distributed applications must meet stringent performance requirements even when the performance characteristics of the underlying systems and networks vary significantly at runtime. Runtime adaptation can be used to tolerate such changes, but sophisticated adaptive distributed programs can be extremely challenging to design, implement and debug. This paper proposes a language called Program Control Language (PCL) that provides a novel means of specifying adaptations in distributed applications. PCL is based on an abstract, global representation of a distributed program (a static task graph), which enables a programmer to reason about and to describe a wide range of application-specific adaptation strategies at a high level, using a few key mechanisms. PCL provides simple high-level syntax for local and remote adaptation operations, local and remote performance monitoring (and aggregation), and for performing adaptations synchronously or asynchronously with respect to the execution of the application process initiating the adaptation. The global task graph representation enables remote performance metrics and adaptation operations to be specified in simple global terms by any process, and the compiler and runtime system automatically perform the communication and synchronization required for the remote operations. The paper describes the conceptual adaptation framework, the PCL language, and our implementation of the PCL compiler and runtime system. The paper uses three adaptative applications examples to illustrate the capabilities and benefits of PCL, and to show experimentally that the performance overheads of using PCL for implementing an adaptive application are negligible.
ISSN:0743-7315
1096-0848
DOI:10.1016/S0743-7315(03)00117-5