POEMS: A parallel object-oriented environment for multi-computer systems

POEMS is a Parallel Object-oriented Environment for Multi-computer Systems. In order to support dynamic load balancing, its runtime execution model is based on object replication. Method invocation in POEMS is asynchronous and threads are created to execute methods. Inter-object, intra-object as well as intra-method parallelism are all supported. Programs in POEMS are written using two classes of objects, i.e. parallel object replication (POR) and parallel object collection (POC) classes. They are used to support programming in MPMD and SPMD styles, respectively. This paper will focus on the object models and programming facilities of POEMS and presents some preliminary performance studies. The major features and execution models of POR and POC classes are described in detail. In addition, some typical applications are also presented to illustrate the usage of these two classes. The implementation issues of a POEMS prototype runtime system are also discussed.