Abstract
Microtasking on four-processor CRAY X-MP computers is examined. The examination includes descriptions of important properties of Cray microtasking and an explanation of how to apply it to a program package. The experience of applying Cray microtasking to the general purpose partial differential equation package PLTMG of R. Bank et al. [1985, 1986] is communicated. Results of experiments in a single-job (dedicated) computing environment show that a large part of PLTMG's interprocedural parallelism can be exploited with microtasking and little to moderate human effort. An experiment involving PLTMG and conducted to assess the performance of Cray microtasking in a multiprogramming (batch) environment is also described. This and related experiments described in [Bieterman 1987] are evidently the first of their kind reported.
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The author gratefully acknowledges support through NSF Grant No. ASC-8519354.
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Bieterman, M. Microtasking general purpose partial differential equation software on the CRAY X-MP. J Supercomput 2, 381–413 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00156676
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00156676