Developers from a number of companies and user groups, including Meiko Scientific Ltd, the IBM UK Scientific Centre, Intel ESDC, and the German research centre, GMD, are working on a European Community-funded project to develop a Portable Parallel Programming Environment for supercomputers. Around UKP10m is earmarked for the three-year Esprit 3 programme which aims to promote supercomputing by simplifying application development. The participants, drawing on work begun under the Esprit 2 Genesis programme, are researching three system layers: a runtime system, a cross development system and portability tools. The runtime system combines message passing, a High performance Fortran runtime component and event monitoring component, to run initially on Meiko, IBM and Intel systems. The cross development tool set comprises a High Performance Fortran transformation system and symbolic debugger, real-time and post mortem performance analysers and low level debuggers. Initially, these will run on Sparc and RS/6000 hardware. Finally, the portability layer comprises existing European Community Portable Communication Tools Environment software and Parmacs software from GMD. It is intended that the resulting system will be marketed by the participants when the project draws to a close in mid-1995; full specifications will be published to spur take-up by application developers.
