Evaluating Functional Memory-Managed Parallel Languages for HPC Using the NAS Parallel Benchmarks.

Functiona1, memory-managed parallel languages (FMPLs) are a recent innovative approach to shared-memory parallel programming. Despite their rising prevalence in other areas, FMPLs have yet to gain traction in HPC. In this work, we explore the utility of FMPLs for HPC by re-implementing the NAS Parallel Benchmarks in an FMPL.For this study, we ported the benchmarks into the Parallel ML language. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using Parallel ML for HPC applications based on our development experience. We compare the performance of our Parallel ML implementation to the existing C/OpenMP version. The FMPL implementations are $1.02 \times -5.76 \times$ slower compared to OpenMP. Our positive development experience combined with some competitive performance results suggest that FMPLs have the potential to become a viable choice for HPC applications. We conclude by describing our future work to automatically manage distributed memory within an FMPL, creating a compelling new programming model for HPC.