Introduction and background

Introduction

Programming large heterogeneous distributed environments such as GRID or P2P infrastructures is a challenging task. This statement remains true even if we consider research that has focused on enabling these types of infrastructures for scientific computing such as resource management and discovery [FK97], [GFKH99], [CFK+88], service architecture [FKNT02], security [WSF+03] and data management [ABB+02], [SSA+01]. Efforts to port traditional programming tools such as MPI [FK98], [RFG+00], [KTIFoster03] or BSP [TDC03], [WP00], also had some success. These tools allow programmers to run their existing parallel applications on large heterogeneous distributed environments. However, efficient exploitation of performance regarding the heterogeneity still needs to be manually controlled and tuned by programmers.

POP-C++ and POP-Java are implementations of the POP (Parallel Object Programing) model first introduced by Dr. Tuan Anh Nguyen in his PhD thesis [Ngu04]. POP-C++ is an extension of the C++ programming language [KN07] and POP-Java is an extension of the Java programming language [Cle10]. The POP model is based on the very simple idea that objects are suitable structures to distribute data and executable codes over heterogeneous distributed hardware and to make them interact between each other.

Inspired by CORBA [Object Management Group01] and C++, the POP-C++ programming language extends C++ by adding a new type of parallel object, allowing to run C++ objects in distributed environments. With POP-C++, programming efficients distributed applications is as simple as writing a C++ programs. The POP-Java programming language extends Java and implements the same mechanisms as POP-C++.

The POP model

The POP model extends the traditional object oriented programming model by adding the minimum necessary functionality to allow for an easy development of coarse grain distributed high performance applications. When the object oriented paradigm has unified the concept of module and type to create the new concept of class, the POP model unifies the concept of class with the concept of task (or process). This is realized by adding to traditional sequential classes a new type of class: the parallel class. By instantiating parallel classes we are able to create a new category of objects we will call parallel objects in the rest of this document.

Parallel objects are objects that can be remotely executed. They coexist and cooperate with traditional sequential objects during the application execution. Parallel objects keep advantages of object-orientation such as data encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism and adds new properties to objects such as:

  • Distributed shareable objects
  • Dynamic and transparent object allocation
  • Various method invocation semantics

System overview

Although the POP-C++ programming system focuses on an object-oriented programming model, it also includes a runtime system which provides the necessary services to run POP-C++ and POP-Java applications over distributed environments.

An overview of the POP system (Both POP-C++ and POP-Java) architecture is illustrated in Figure 1. In POP-Java, only the programming system is implemented and the runtime system is the same as the one used in POP-C++.

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Figure 1: POP system architecture

The POP-C++ runtime system consists of three layers: the service layer, the POP-C++ service abstractions layer, and the programming layer. The service layer is built to interface with lower level toolkits (e.g. Globus) and the operating system. The essential service abstraction layer provides an abstract interface for the programming layer. On top of the architecture is the programming layer, which provides necessary support for developing distributed object-oriented applications. More details of the POP-C++ runtime layers are given in a separate document [Ngu04].

Structure of this manual

This manual has 8 chapters, including this introduction: