From: kielmann@isa.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Thilo Kielmann)
Subject: Summary: PARMACS (long)
Organization: TU Darmstadt
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 11:51:43 GMT

A few days ago I asked for documentation concerning the PARMACS macro
package. Several people asked for the information I received so I decided
to sum it up. I wish to thank the following people for their help:

Mats Brorsson, Vivek Khera, Geoff Barrett, Rolf Hempel, Sanjay Raina,
Rusty Lusk, Gail A. Alverson, Colin Wright, Peter Junglas
(and everybody I forgot, sorry)

The following lines contain the information, as I "understood" it.
All errors are due to my ignorance.



First, I cite Rolf Hempel's technical report mentioned below:

``Some years ago, scientists at Argonne National Laboratory began
working on tools for software portability for parallel programs. In
the beginning they were mostly interested in shared memory systems
like the Sequent Balance. The result of that work was a package of
macros which allowed the user to specify functions like process
creation or synchronization in a portable way [parmacs-book].
Moreover, these macros were implemented in a very efficient way, so
that even with very small grained parallelism almost linear speed-up
could be observed.''

The following book contains information about this macro package:
(Unfortunately, it seems to be out of print.)

@Book{parmacs-book,
  author = 	 "James Boyle and Ralph Butler and Terrence Disz and
		  Barnett Glickfeld and Ewing Lusk and Ross Overbeek
		  and James Patterson and Rick Stevens",
  title = 	 "Portable Programs for Parallel Processors",
  publisher = 	 "Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.",
  year = 	 1987,
  isbn = 	 "0-03-014153-2",
  address = 	 "New York, NY",
  comment = 	 "Describes the use and implementation of the PARMACS
		  macros.  Discuss philosophy behind message-passing,
		  shared-memory, and combined MP and SM models in
		  programming.  Copies of the macros can be gotten
		  from \mbox{\tt netlib@research.att.com} by sending
		  the message {\tt send index from parmacs}."
}

This macro package may be obtained by sending email to
netlib@ornl.gov.
The email should consist of the following line:

send index from parmacs



Rusty Lusk wrote:

``Meanwhile, the Argonne group has also enhanced it (parmacs) and
calls the new package p4. p4 is available from info.mcs.anl.gov in the
directory pub/p4.  Get the file p4t1.2.tar.Z.  Documentation is included.''


The following lines are from P4's introduction:

``p4 is a library of macros and subroutines developed at Argonne National
Laboratory for programming a variety of parallel machines.  Its predecessor
was the m4-based "Argonne macros" system described in the Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston book "Portable Programs for Parallel Processors, by Lusk, Overbeek, et
al., from which p4 takes its name.  The current p4 system maintains the same
basic computational models described there (monitors for the shared-memory
model, message-passing for the distributed-memory model, and support for
combining the two models) while significantly increasing ease and flexibility
of use.''



Again, I cite Rolf Hempel's technical report:

``For parallel computers with local memory only there is no obvious
way for implementing the shared memory macros. ...
Therefore, during a visit of the author at Argonne in 1988 the
corresponding PARMACS package for programs written in FORTRAN was
defined and implemented on a variety of parallel systems with both
local and shared memory.''

There exists a tech report by Rolf Hempel describing these macros entitled:

``The ANL/GMD Macros (PARMACS) in FORTRAN for Portable Parallel
Programming using the Message Passing Programming Model''

This report may be requested by Rolf Hempel using his email address:
gmap10@gmdzi.gmd.de


Unlike the definition, the current implementation of this macro package
is not public domain.
Instead, it will be supported (and sold for moderate prices as Rolf
Hempel told me) by:
	PALLAS GmbH
	Hermuehlheimer Str. 10
	D-5040 Bruehl
	Germany

	Tel: +49 2232 1896-21
	Fax: +49 2232 1896-29

You may also contact Mr. Solchenbach at PALLAS GmbH:
karls@pallas-gmbh.de



---
Thilo Kielmann	<kielmann@isa.informatik.th-darmstadt.de>

Working at, not speaking for:

University of Darmstadt
Dept. of Computer Science
Alexanderstr. 10
D-6100 Darmstadt
Germany


Newsgroups: comp.parallel