AssistConf: a Grid configuration tool for the ASSIST parallel programming environment

The paper presents AssistConf, a graphical user interface designed to configure an ASSIST program and to run it on a Grid platform. ASSIST (a software development system based upon integrated skeleton technology) is a new programming environment for the development of parallel and distributed high-performance applications. The main goals of ASSIST are allowing high-level programmability and software productivity for complex multidisciplinary applications, and performance portability across different platforms, including homogenous parallel machines and cluster/Beowulf systems, heterogeneous clusters, and computational Grids. AssistConf is used to configure the ASSIST program and establish a mapping between the program modules and the most suitable machines in the Grid candidate to execute them. It simplifies the creation of the XML ASSIST configuration file, giving users a graphical view of the XML file produced by the ASSIST compilation phase, and permitting an easy identification of the machines to be used for execution. Finally, the configuration file produced by AssistConf is used as input to the assistrun command, which drives the execution of the ASSIST program over the Grid.