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Integrating task parallelism with actors

Published:19 October 2012Publication History

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces a unified concurrent programming model combining the previously developed Actor Model (AM) and the task-parallel Async-Finish Model (AFM). With the advent of multi-core computers, there is a renewed interest in programming models that can support a wide range of parallel programming patterns. The proposed unified model shows how the divide-and-conquer approach of the AFM and the no-shared mutable state and event-driven philosophy of the AM can be combined to solve certain classes of problems more efficiently and productively than either of the aforementioned models individually. The unified model adds actor creation and coordination to the AFM, while also enabling parallelization within actors. This paper describes two implementations of the unified model as extensions of Habanero-Java and Habanero-Scala. The unified model adds to the foundations of parallel programs, and to the tools available for the programmer to aid in productivity and performance while developing parallel software.

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM Conferences
        OOPSLA '12: Proceedings of the ACM international conference on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications
        October 2012
        1052 pages
        ISBN:9781450315616
        DOI:10.1145/2384616
        • cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
          ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 47, Issue 10
          OOPSLA '12
          October 2012
          1011 pages
          ISSN:0362-1340
          EISSN:1558-1160
          DOI:10.1145/2398857
          Issue’s Table of Contents

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        • Published: 19 October 2012

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