Programming Heterogeneous Computing Architectures
Various machines were designed to include both traditional processors and vector processors, such as the Fujitsu AP1000 and AP3000. Programming such heterogeneous machines can be difficult since developing programs that make best use of characteristics of different processors increases the programmer's burden. It increases code complexity and decreases portability of the code by requiring hardware specific code to be interleaved throughout application code. Balancing the application workload across processors can be problematic, especially given that they typically have different performance characteristics. There are different conceptual models to deal with the problem, for example using a coordination language and program building blocks (programming libraries and/or higher order functions). Each block can have a different native implementation for each processor type. Users simply program using these abstractions and an intelligent compiler chooses the best implementation based on the context.
Read more about this topic: Vector Processor
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