This Small Business Innovations Research Phase I project proposes to develop a sophisticated environment, based on computer assisted software engineering (CASE) techniques, for development of parallel programs. Although parallel programming is substantially difficult than sequential programming, the tools available for developing parallel programs are typically even more primitive than those for sequential programming. This is partly due to the fact that the information available at the compile time to the system is inadequate to provide any substantial support during development. Parallel object oriented languages provide a potential solution to this problem. The specificity provided by objects is enhanced by other primitives in the system. The compile time system may be able to support development of programs more effectively. This project conducts research to determine the feasibility of such a parallel programming system, and to develop techniques that are necessary to building it. In addition to the novel exploitation of language-specificity, the research will also involve case techniques, and support for multi-lingual programs, and software reuse. The research will lead to a cohesive and integrated environment for supporting all phases in the software life-cycle of multi-lingual programs. The software market for high performance parallel machines is starting to expand. It is expected that parallel machines will be used in a more broad based set of application beyond the current scientific computation niche that they occupy. Software development environments will fill an important need in this area, which remains unfulfilled as yet.
