DOWNLOAD PRESENTATIONWATCH VIDEOHistorically, getting the utmost performance from a computer has often
required programming at very low levels, such as assembly language.
Lately, with supercomputer architectures relatively stable for a long
period, we seem to have gotten away from this. But now we are entering a
new period of diversity and rapid change in extreme-scale systems. What
are the prospects for programming such systems? I will present an
overview of current practice and research directions in programming
environments at ORNL and the broader DOE community targeting
computational science and engineering applications on the largest
available computer systems. I will touch upon work in programming
languages and related tools, communication middleware, operating
systems, fault tolerance, and the engineering of scientific software.
Much of this work focuses on providing higher levels of abstraction to
software developers, while encapsulating and hiding the most
performance-sensitive details.
