Comparative Cross-Platform Performance Results from a Parallelizing SML Compiler

. We have developed a compiler for Standard ML which allows instantiation of a fixed set of higher order functions with equivalent parallel algorithmic skeletons written in C and MPI. The compiler is intended to be both portable and semi-automatic. Here we discuss the performance of the code generated by the compiler, for five exemplar programs on six MIMD parallel machines. Results suggest acceptable performance and consistent cross-platform behaviour. 1 Compiler overview We have developed a parallelising compiler [10] for a pure functional subset of Standard ML in which the sole source of parallelism is indicated by specific higher order functions (HOFs). These are translated into parallel algorithmic skeletons[3] implemented in C linked with an MPI library [8]. The main objective of this work is to build a compiler for which all parallelism is implicit. Our use of algorithmic skeletons allows us to partially achieve this goal. On the one hand the selection and parallel impl...