Massively parallel computing: Data distribution and communication

We discuss some techniques for preserving locality of reference in index spaces when mapped to memory units in a distributed memory architecture. In particular, we discuss the use of multidimensional address spaces instead of linearized address spaces, partitioning of irregular grids, and placement of partitions among nodes. We also discuss a set of communication primitives we have found very useful on the Connection Machine systems in implementing scientific and engineering applications. We briefly review some of the techniques used to fully utilize the bandwidth of the binary cube network of the CM-2 and CM-200, and give some performance data from implementations of communication primitives.