Parallel compilation for a parallel machine

An application for a parallel computer with multiple, independent processors often includes different programs (functions) for the individual processors; compilation of such functions can proceed independently. We implemented a compiler that exploits this parallelism by partitioning the input program for parallel translation. The host system for the parallel compiler is an Ethernet-based network of workstations, and different functions of the application program are compiled in parallel on different workstations. For typical programs in our environment, we observe a speedup ranging from 3 to 6 using not more than 9 processors. The paper includes detailed measurements for this parallel compiler; we report the system overhead, implementation overhead, as well as the speedup obtained when compared with sequential compilation.