Communications of the ACM
Python Bindings Snake Into Global Arrays Toolkit
Credit: Courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers have expanded the Global Arrays (GA) Toolkit to include full support for the Python computer programming language, making it easier for programmers to write codes and take advantage of GA features.
The GA Toolkit enables researchers to efficiently access global data, run larger models, and simulate bigger systems. By combining Python and GA, programmers can more easily customize the GA Toolkit when they need shared memory for distributed memory computers.
The researchers combined Python with GA using the Cython language, which they say makes writing C extensions for the Python language as easy as using Python itself. The Python-GA combination gives programmers a more convenient globally-shared view of multi-dimensional arrays while retaining the option to use the message passing interface, and provides a work-alike replacement for Python's NumPy module.
The new Python module, Global Arrays in NumPy, allows for the development and debugging of serial NumPy codes, which can later scale on more capable supercomputers.
From Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
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