Publications [#236944] of John H. Reif

Journal articles or Book chapters PUBLISHED

1. Mills, PH; Nyland, LS; Prins, JF; Reif, JH, Prototyping N-body simulation in Proteus, Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing (December, 1992), pp. 476-482 [pdf]
   (last updated on 2026/01/14)

   Abstract:
   This paper explores the use of Proteus, an architecture-independent language suitable for prototyping parallel and distributed programs. Proteus is a high-level imperative notation based on sets and sequences with a single construct for the parallel composition of processes communicating through shared memory. Several different parallel algorithms for N-body simulation are presented in Proteus, illustrating how Proteus provides a common foundation for expressing the various parallel programming models. This common foundation allows prototype parallel programs to be tested and evolved without the use of machine-specific languages. To transform prototypes to implementations on specific architectures, program refinement techniques are utilized. Refinement strategies are illustrated that target broad-spectrum parallel intermediate languages, and their viability is demonstrated by refining an N-body algorithm to data-parallel CVL code.