CLUMPS: a model of efficient, general purpose parallel computation

Campbell´s Lenient Unified Model of Parallel Systems (CLUMPS) is presented, a candidate model of parallel computation which aims to tackle and solve the deficiencies of existing candidate models. It is shown that all parallel computers can perform the same computations, but differ in their ability to support different communication loads. This conclusion is reflected in the definition of CLUMPS which aims to be architecture-independent, reflective of execution costs, expressible and intellectually manageable. It also reflects the principle that if a problem can be partitioned into regions, and if those regions are preserved in the mapping of the algorithm to the architecture then greater communication efficiency can be achieved than if the locality was not preserved. Algorithmic skeletons are seen as high level language constructs capturing parallelism, hence communication, in a regular and manageable manner. Such skeletons can be costed in terms of CLUMPS to provide parallel performance prediction