In an effort to increase Quarks' impact, we have tried to provide a
simple user interface. Quarks supports C and C++ programs using the
m4 macros to describe parallelism and synchronization, as in the
SPLASH programs. In addition, Quarks supports a simple X-based user
interface that allows limited parallel debugging using
gdb.
An Alpha release (0.8) with the above-described features is available via anonymous ftp (430K compressed tar file). Feedback on the interface (API) is especially solicited, as well as other comments and critiques on the system.
Future releases will contain the following additional work in progress:
In conjunction with the Quarks design effort, we are modifying the
gcc compiler to generate DSM-specific code, including
embedded support for mixed DSM and RPC programs (as in Carlos, support
for static shared data, and (soon) support for software write
detection and fine-grained access tracing, which we anticipate using
for performance tuning and debugging.
It is our hope that by placing a relatively sophisticated DSM system in the public domain we will increase the number of users and make DSM research easier to perform.