A Tool-Based Software Laboratory for Distributed and Parallel Computing

这是一个建立基于工具的软件实验室的项目，以促进分布式和并行计算的实验研究。该实验室有三个主要组成部分：一组帮助开发分布式和并行算法的高级工具，一个编程语言工作台，以及一个可配置的操作系统内核。长期目标是利用实验室作为解决设计和使用分布式和并行系统的几个基本问题的工具。这些问题从实现利用替代体系结构的并行算法，到理解跨广泛体系结构的进程间通信和同步的原理，到设计利用分布式和并行体系结构中固有的异构性和冗余性的系统软件。除了这一长期目标外，实验室的设计和实施将使我们能够调查两个相辅相成的问题。首先，构建强大而高效的工具的问题本身就是一项有趣而具有挑战性的研究。每个工具都必须足够通用，以支持广泛的应用程序，同时还必须能够在各种基础架构上高效地实现。其次，实验室的广度将使研究系统组件之间的相互作用成为可能。特别是，设计并行算法的高级工具如何依赖于语言支持系统，以及这些系统又如何依赖于内核提供的通信支持。

This is a project to build a tool-based software laboratory to facilitate experimental research in distributed and parallel computing. The laboratory has three major components: a collection of high-level tools to aid in the development of distributed and parallel algorithms, a programming language workbench, and a configurable operating system kernel. The long term goal is to use the laboratory as a vehicle for addressing several problems fundamental to the design and use of distributed and parallel systems. These problems range from implementing parallel algorithms that exploit alternative architectures, to understanding the principles of interprocess communication and synchronization across a wide spectrum of architectures, to designing system software that exploits the heterogeneity and redundancy inherent in distributed and parallel architectures. In addition to this long term goal, designing and implementing the laboratory will allow investigation of two complementary issues. First, the problem of building powerful and efficient tools is interesting and challenging research in its own right. Each tool must be general enough to support a wide range of applications and at the same time must be efficiently implementable on a wide spectrum of underlying architectures. Second, the breadth of the laboratory will allow study of the interaction between system components. In particular, how high-level tools for designing parallel algorithms depend on the language support systems, and how these systems, in turn, depend on the communication support provided by the kernel.