What is DPCE?

Data Parallel C Extensions (DPCE) is a set of extensions to Standard C that supports programming of data parallel applications. The purpose of DPCE is to provide a portable and concise way to write programs that will run efficiently on parallel systems.

DPCE is a technical report approved by the ANSI X3J11 committee. The purpose of DPCE is to detail the most fundamental concepts of a consistent data parallel model. DPCE adopts a general model that includes the basic concept of parallel data aggregates that have structure (rank and dimensions), memory layout, and context (active or participating elements). (DPCE was initially based on the C* language developed by Thinking Machines Corporation.)

The latest DPCE Technical Report can be obtained via ftp at ftp.psrv.com in the directory dpce or by following the link.

DPCE is somewhat simpilar in approach to High Performance Fortran, as both are data parallel extensions to existing languages. A comparison of DPC and HPF (for people who are familiar with HPF's features) is available.

What does Data Parallel mean?

In the data parallel programming model, you specify the distribution of your data at a very high level, and the program is then written as if the data were globally addressable by all processors and there is a single logical execution thread. This is much easier for the programmer than attempting to directly deal with data that may be on many different processors and with many different execution threads. The compiler creates and manages all of the parallel tasks and data transfer between them, based on the user's original distribution of the data.

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