The London Parallel Applications Centre,
Queen Mary and Westfield College,
Mile End Road,
London E1 4NS
UK
The EUROPA Working Group Project Manager,
The London Parallel Applications Centre
Queen Mary and Westfield College,
Mile End Road,
London E1 4NS
UK
The EUROPA Working Group on Parallel C++ brings together a group of major users of object-oriented in order to agree a definition of a parallel object-oriented language derived from C++ which can be used to provide support for real end user applications of high performance computing (HPC).
The EUROPA Working Group on Parallel C++ will agree (and separately to this Working Group implement) a Parallel C++, ||C++, whose form will be agreed among its members. ||C++ will be supported by major European suppliers and will become have the aim of becoming a de facto standard.
The objective is not to standardise, per se, but to develop a rugged definition of a parallel C++ which can be supported in a wide range of uses and which has been verified as able to support the sorts of applications that future ISVs will want to build. The result will, in virtue of its wide acceptance, be widely used and therefore close to standard.
In order to maximise market acceptance the implementation and underpinnings should be as widely accepted as possible. This will promote portability, maintainability and interest from systems implementors who wish to create bespoke systems. Additionally (and perhaps crucially for solutions provision) it will give confidence to the end-user that the implementation is not simply vendor-specific.
||C++ will itself be the subject of initial standardisation and definition between LPAC, ICL, Bull and Intel. It is anticipated that the resulting definition will become the de facto European Standard for (Parallel) C++ on Parallel and Distributed systems. It will build upon discussions which have already taken place between LPAC, Bull and ICL.
In order to achieve its aims, EUROPA brings together a number of major users and suppliers in order to pool their experience of different applications areas. These will verify that the system as defined is robust enough to support various classes of applications e.g. high performance database systems, large scale MIS systems, numerical applications, in which these vendors have particular expertise.