Types, regions, and effects for safe programming with object-oriented parallel frameworks

Abstract

Object-oriented frameworks can make parallel programming easier by providing generic parallel algorithms such as map, reduce, or pipeline and letting the user fill in the details with sequential code. However, such frameworks can produce incorrect behavior if they are not carefully used, e.g., if a user-supplied function performs an unsynchronized access to a global variable. We develop novel techniques that can prevent such errors. Building on a language (Deterministic Parallel Java, or DPJ) with an expressive region-based type and effect system, we show how to write a framework API that enables sound reasoning about the effects of unknown user-supplied methods. We also describe novel extensions to DPJ that enable generic types and effects while retaining soundness. We present a formal semantics and soundness properties for the language. Finally, we describe an evaluation showing that our technique can express three parallel frameworks and three realistic parallel algorithms using those frameworks. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.