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UW Department of Computer Science and Engineering

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ZPL

A Portable, High Performance
Parallel Programming Language for
Science and Engineering Computations


ZPL is an array programming language designed from first principles for fast execution on both sequential and parallel computers. Because ZPL benefits from recent research in parallel compilation, it provides a convenient high level programming medium for supercomputers with efficiency comparable to handcoded message passing. Users with scientific computing experience can generally learn ZPL in a few hours. Those who have used MATLAB or Fortran 90 may already be acquainted with array programming style.

Characteristics of ZPL. . .

bullet ZPL is an array language, so expressions like A+B add whole arrays.
bullet ZPL compiles to ANSI C, which is then compiled with a machine-specific library to the target machine. ZPL is presently targeted to the Cray T3E, IBM SP2, Intel Paragon, SGI Origin, Sun Enterprise, High-performance clusters, and UNIX workstations.
bullet Though new programs should be written entirely in ZPL, the language can interface with legacy sequential C or Fortran codes. In addition, ZPL provides access to scientific libraries.
bullet Because ZPL is fully portable, programs are developed on a workstation and simply recompiled for any parallel machine.
bulletZPL is in use at supercomputer centers including the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, Los Alamos National Lab, and the Maui High-Performance Computing Center .

The following links are specialized to programmers who may wish to use ZPL and CS researchers interested in the technical details of our work.

Programmers who want to try out ZPL or learn more about it can. . .

bullet Review the characteristics of ZPL that make the language unique.
bullet Walk-through a small program to assess ZPL's look and feel.
bullet Review a language overview.
bullet Down-load an easy-to-use programmer's guide or the full language reference manual.
bullet Review example ZPL programs.
bullet Peruse papers where ZPL was used in a scientific application.
bullet N-body solver for Wind Engineering
bullet Fibroblast Formation
bullet Network routing simulator
bullet Install the ZPL distribution.
bullet Find out about user support, including FAQs, mailing lists, documentation, etc.

Computer scientists who want to know more about the results of the ZPL research can. . .

bullet Learn about the Ironman interface and how it overcomes the problems with message passing.
bullet Read about the communication optimizations performed by the ZPL compiler.
bullet Find out about the Factor/Join structure of the ZPL compiler and how it facilitates high level program optimizations.
bullet Read about ways to collaborate.

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