What is COMPSs?

COMP Superscalar (COMPSs) is a programming model which aims to ease the development of applications for distributed infrastructures, such as Clusters, Grids and Clouds. COMP Superscalar also features a runtime system that exploits the inherent parallelism of applications at execution time.

For the sake of programming productivity, the COMPSs model has four key characteristics:

  • Sequential programming: COMPSs programmers do not need to deal with the typical duties of parallelization and distribution, such as thread creation and synchronization, data distribution, messaging or fault tolerance. Instead, the model is based on sequential programming, which makes it appealing to users that either lack parallel programming expertise or are looking for better programmability.
  • Infrastructure unaware: COMPSs offers a model that abstracts the application from the underlying distributed infrastructure. Hence, COMPSs programs do not include any detail that could tie them to a particular platform, like deployment or resource management. This makes applications portable between infrastructures with diverse characteristics.
  • Standard programming languages: COMPSs is based on the popular programming language Java, but also offers language bindings for Python and C/C++ applications. This facilitates the learning of the model, since programmers can reuse most of their previous knowledge.
  • No APIs: In the case of COMPSs applications in Java, the model does not require to use any special API call, pragma or construct in the application; everything is pure standard Java syntax and libraries. With regard the Python and C/C++ bindings, a small set of API calls should be used on the COMPSs applications.
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