The ParMA Project (2007 – 2010)

By Bettina Krammer and Rainer Keller

Nowadays, programmers can no longer rely on performance improvements due to the processors’ increasing clock-speeds. In contrary, all of today’s common processor architectures employ multiple “slower” cores on one die. As a consequence, we are heading towards a parallel future, which is a challenging task to application developers and requires adequate programming methods and tools.
The ParMA project (Parallel Programming for Multi-core Architectures) aims at fully exploiting the power of multi-threading on multi-core architectures for conventional HPC applications, but also for embedded applications on Multi-Processor System-on-a-Chip (MPSoC) architectures. The consortium comprises 17 leading partners from four European countries, namely Bull, CAPS-Entreprise, UVSQ, DA, INT and CEA-LIST from France, HLRS, FZJ-ZAM, TUD-ZIH, GWT-TUD, RECOM Services, GNS and MAGMA from Germany, UAB, Indra and Robotiker from Spain, and Allinea from UK. Their Kick-off Meeting takes place in Dresden right before ISC 2007.
The project has been approved by ITEA2 and is being funded by the corresponding national Public Authorities, e.g. the German BMBF. The overall project will be managed by Bull, with the seven German partners being coordinated by HLRS.

Read more about on ParMA article, inSiDE, Spring 2007 or download the whole article.