The Distributed C Development Environment

Video Animation

A MPEG video animation is availible containing:

a short, most actual description of the Distributed C Development Environment and its features
the animated explanation of a simple Distributed C program (hello.dc)
a description of the powerful Distributed C Development Environment application XPQRT (X11-based parallel Quick Ray Trace)
a video sequence (flight through a futuristic world) calculated by XPQRT

To display the video click one of the following:

full video animation:
DCDE_VIDEO.mpg (52.6 MB; 6:48 minutes)
flight only video:
FLIGHT.mpg (5.6 MB; 0:43 minutes)

Overview

The Distributed C Development Environment was developed at Technische Universität München, Germany, at the chair of Prof. Dr. J. Eickel and is a collection of tools for parallel and distributed programming on single- processor-, multiprocessor- and distributed-UNIX-systems, especially on heterogenous networks of UNIX computers. The environment's main purpose is to support and to simplify the development of distributed applications on UNIX networks. It consists of a compiler for a distributed programming language, called Distributed C, a runtime library and several useful tools.

The programming model is based on explicit concurrency specification in the programming language Distributed C, which is an extension of standard C. Distributed C makes possible the common programming in C together with the user-friendly programming of process management, i. e. the specification, creation, synchronization, communication and termination of concurrently executed processes.

The Distributed C Development Environment supports and simplifies the distributed programming in several ways:

Development time is reduced by checking Distributed C programs for errors during compilation. Because of that, errors within communication or synchronization actions can be easier detected and avoided.
Programming is simplified by allowing the use of simple pointer types even on loosely-coupled systems. This is perhaps the most powerful feature of Distributed C. In this way, dynamic structures like linked lists or trees can be passed between processes elegantly and easily - even in heterogeneous networks. Only the anchor of a dynamic structure must be passed to another process. The runtime system automatically allocates heap space and copies the complete structure.
Developement is user-friendly by supporting the generation and installation of the executable files. A special concept was developed for performing the generation and storage of binaries by local and remote compilation in heterogeneous UNIX-networks.
Programming difficulty is reduced by software-aided allocating processes at runtime. Only the system administrator needs to have special knowledge about the target system's hardware. The user can apply tools to map the processes of a Distributed C program to the hosts of a concrete target system.
Execution time is reduced by allocating processes to nodes of a network with a static load balancing strategy.
Mobility of processes is supported by a powerful heterogeneous process migration feature. Processes can be started on one machine and can be moved at runtime to another, perhaps incompatible machine to continue execution. (This feature is only availible in Distributed C Development Environment version 3.xx or higher.)
Programming is simplified because singleprocessor-, multiprocessor- and distributed-UNIX-systems, especially homogeneous and heterogeneous UNIX- networks can be programmed fully transparently in Distributed C.

The environment runs on the following systems:

Sun SPARCstations (SunOS, SOLARIS),
Hewlett Packard workstations (HP/UX),
IBM workstations (AIX),
IBM ATs (SCO XENIX, SCO UNIX, LINUX),
Convex supercomputers (ConvexOS),
Cray supercomputers (Unicos),
homogeneous and heterogeneous networks of the systems as mentioned above.

Moreover the implementation was designed for the use on Intel iPSC/2s.

The Distributed C Development Environment source code is provided "as is" as free software and distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without warranty of any kind. You can download it via anonymous ftp from ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de:/local/lehrstuhl/eickel/Distributed_C.

Documentations

At the moment the following documentations exist:

C. Pleier, F. Distler: Entwicklung und Implementierung eines Compilers für paralleles Programmieren in C mit Verteilung der simultan ablaufenden Prozesse in einem homogenen Netzwerk; Fortgeschrittenenpraktikum, Institut fuer Informatik, Technische Universität München, 1991.
- written in german
- availible by anonymous ftp from ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de /local/lehrstuhl/eickel/Distributed_C/Doku.1.deutsch.ps.gz
- describes the first implementation, contains many implementation details
C. Pleier: C neben C: Distributed C - Paralleles Programmieren in C; IX-Multiuser-Multitasking-Magazin, June, pp. 88-96, Heise, 1991.
- written in german
- is a brief version of above documentation, describes the first implementation shortly, contains some implementaion details
C. Pleier: Evaluierung, Weiterentwicklung und Leistungsanalyse eines Compilers für die verteilte Parallelprogrammierung; Diplomarbeit, Institut fuer Informatik, Technische Universität München, 1992.
- written in german
- availible by anonymous ftp from ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de /local/lehrstuhl/eickel/Distributed_C/Doku.2.deutsch.ps.gz
- describes the further development from higher point of view, contains especially all heterogeneous concepts
C. Pleier: The Distributed C Development Environment; report TUM-I9324, Institut fuer Informatik, Technische Universität München, September 1993.
- written in english
- availible by anonymous ftp from ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de /local/lehrstuhl/eickel/Distributed_C/manual.english.ps.gz
- is a detailed description and a user's guide at top level of view
C. Pleier: Ein Verfahren zur Prozeßmigration in heterogenen UNIX-Rechnernetzen; PIK - Praxis der Informationsverarbeitung und Kommunikation, 2/95, S. 75-81, Saur, Juni, 1995.
- written in german
- is a short description of a concept for heterogeneous process migration implemented using the Distributed C Development
C. Pleier: Prozeßverlagerung in heterogenen Rechnernetzen basierend auf einer speziellen Übersetzungstechnik; Herbert Utz Verlag Wissenschaft, September, 1996.
- written in german
- is a comprehensive and detailed description of a concept for heterogeneous process migration implemented using the Distributed C Development
Distributed C Development Environment Video Animation (DCDE_VIDEO.mpg; 52.6 MB)
- written in english
  contains:
- a short, most actual description of the Distributed C Development Environment and its features (including heterogeneous process migration)
- the animated explanation of a simple Distributed C program (hello.dc)
- the description of the powerful Distributed C Development Environment application XPQRT (X11-based parallel Quick Ray Trace)
- a video sequence (flight through a futuristic world) calculated by XPQRT (Flight only Video, FLIGHT.mpg; 5.6 MB)

Acknowledgements

The Distributed C Development Environment was originally designed and implemented by Franz Distler, Christoph Pleier and Markus Pleier, and tested, evaluated, reworked and extended by Christoph Pleier at the chair for compiler construction of Professor Dr. Jürgen Eickel at Technische Universität München, Germany.

Special thanks for many suggestions and advices during the development goes to Anton Hartl, Markus Stumpf, Elmar Bartel and Markus Pleier.

Thanks for hints concerning use, application and further development goes to Thomas Busl , Professor Dr. Siegmar Groß , Clemens Harlfinger , Peter Huber.

Thanks for the development of the very powerful example XPQRT (X11-based Parallel Quick Ray Tracer) goes to Steve Koren for writing the original sequential raytracing code and to Clemens Harlfinger for parallelizing and enhancing the code.

Christoph Pleier, 12.9.1996