Software portability

About: Software portability is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8987 publications have been published within this topic receiving 164922 citations. The topic is also known as: portability.

P3L: a Structured High-level Parallel Language and its Structured Support

Abstract: The paper presents a parallel programming methodology that ensures easy programming, efficiency and portability of programs to different machines belonging to the class of the general-purpose, distributed-memory, MIMD architectures. The methodology is based on the definition of a new, high-level, explicitly parallel language, called P3 L, and of a set of static tools that automatically adapt the program features for each target architecture. P3 L does not require programmers to specify process activations, the actual parallelism degree, scheduling, or interprocess communications, i.e. all those features that need to be adjusted to harness each specific target machine. Parallelism is, on the other hand, expressed in a structured and qualitative way, by hierarchical composition of a restricted set of language constructs, corresponding to those forms of parallelism that are frequently encountered in parallel applications, and that can be efficiently implemented. The efficient portability of P3 L applications is guaranteed by the compiler along with the novel structure of the support. The compiler automatically adapts the program features for each specific architecture, using the costs (in terms of performance) of the low-level mechanisms exported by the architecture itself. In our methodology, these costs, along with other features of the architecture, are viewed through an abstract machine, whose interface is used by the compiler to produce the final object code.

An Extension of the StarSs Programming Model for Platforms with Multiple GPUs

Abstract: While general-purpose homogeneous multi-core architectures are becoming ubiquitous, there are clear indications that, for a number of important applications, a better performance/power ratio can be attained using specialized hardware accelerators. These accelerators require specific SDK or programming languages which are not always easy to program. Thus, the impact of the new programming paradigms on the programmer's productivity will determine their success in the high-performance computing arena. In this paper we present GPU Superscalar (GPUSs), an extension of the Star Superscalar programming model that targets the parallelization of applications on platforms consisting of a general-purpose processor connected with multiple graphics processors. GPUSs deals with architecture heterogeneity and separate memory address spaces, while preserving simplicity and portability. Preliminary experimental results for a well-known operation in numerical linear algebra illustrate the correct adaptation of the runtime to a multi-GPU system, attaining notable performance results.

RIOT: An Open Source Operating System for Low-End Embedded Devices in the IoT

Abstract: As the Internet of Things (IoT) emerges, compact operating systems (OSs) are required on low-end devices to ease development and portability of IoT applications. RIOT is a prominent free and open source OS in this space. In this paper, we provide the first comprehensive overview of RIOT. We cover the key components of interest to potential developers and users: the kernel, hardware abstraction, and software modularity, both conceptually and in practice for various example configurations. We explain operational aspects like system boot-up, timers, power management, and the use of networking. Finally, the relevant APIs as exposed by the OS are discussed along with the larger ecosystem around RIOT, including development and open source community aspects.

Generic Security Service Application Program Interface

Abstract: This Generic Security Service Application Program Interface (GSS-API) definition provides security services to callers in a generic fashion, supportable with a range of underlying mechanisms and technologies and hence allowing source-level portability of applications to different environments. This specification defines GSS-API services and primitives at a level independent of underlying mechanism and programming language environment, and is to be complemented by other, related specifications:

The programming model of ASSIST, an environment for parallel and distributed portable applications

Abstract: A software development system based upon integrated skeleton technology (ASSIST) is a proposal of a new programming environment oriented to the development of parallel and distributed high-performance applications according to a unified approach. The main goals are: high-level programmability and software productivity for complex multidisciplinary applications, including data-intensive and interactive software; performance portability across different platforms, in particular large-scale platforms and grids; effective reuse of parallel software; efficient evolution of applications through versions that scale according to the underlying technologies.The purpose of this paper is to show the principles of the proposed approach in terms of the programming model (successive papers will deal with the environment implementation and with performance evaluation). The features and the characteristics of the ASSIST programming model are described according to an operational semantics style and using examples to drive the presentation, to show the expressive power and to discuss the research issues.According to our previous experience in structured parallel programming, in ASSIST we wish to overcome some limitations of the classical skeletons approach to improve generality and flexibility, expressive power and efficiency for irregular, dynamic and interactive applications, as well as for complex combinations of task and data parallelism. A new paradigm, called "parallel module" (parmod) is defined which, in addition to expressing the semantics of several skeletons as particular cases, is able to express more general parallel and distributed program structures, including both data-flow and nondeterministic reactive computations. ASSIST allows the programmer to design the applications in the form of generic graphs of parallel components. Another distinguishing feature is that ASSIST modules are able to utilize external objects, including shared data structures and abstract objects (e.g. CORBA), with standard interfacing mechanisms. In turn, an ASSIST application can be reused and exported as a component for other applications, possibly expressed in different formalisms.