Discussion

In this chapter we have reviewed and compared some parallel language and library projects to our HPJava system. Compared against others, each language and library has its advantages and disadvantages. A biggest edge the HPJava system has against other systems is that HPJava not only is a Java extension but also is translated from a HPJava code to a pure Java byte code. Moreover, because HPJava is totally implemented in Java, it can be deployed any systems without any changes. Java is object-oriented and highly dynamic. That can be as valuable in scientific computing as in any other programming discipline. Moreover, it is evident that SPMD environments are successful in high-performance computing, despite that programming applications in SPMD-style is relatively difficult. Our HPspmd programming model targets SPMD environments with lower-level access to the parallel machines unlike other systems. In the chapter 6, we have discussed Java's potential to displace established scientific programming languages. According to this argument, HPJava, an HPspmd programming model, has a high advantage over other parallel languages. Many systems adopted implicit parallelism and simplicity for users. But this results in the difficulty of implementing the system. Some systems chose C, C++, and Fortran as their target language for high-performance. But, mentioned earlier, Java is a very competitive language for scientific computing. The choice of C or C++ makes the systems less portable and secure in the modern computing environment. Thus, because of the popularity, portability, high-performance of Java and SPMD-style programming, the HPJava system gets many advantages over other systems.