Rice Univesrity Logo
    • FAQ
    • Deposit your work
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   Rice Scholarship Home
    • Faculty & Staff Research
    • George R. Brown School of Engineering
    • Computer Science
    • Computer Science Technical Reports
    • View Item
    •   Rice Scholarship Home
    • Faculty & Staff Research
    • George R. Brown School of Engineering
    • Computer Science
    • Computer Science Technical Reports
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    An Empirical Evaluation of Dependence Analysis in Parallel Program Comprehension

    Thumbnail
    Name:
    TR95-249.pdf
    Size:
    7.877Mb
    Format:
    PDF
    View/Open
    Author
    Monk, Douglas M.
    Date
    May 1995
    Abstract
    This research contributes two advances to the field of empirical study of parallel programming: first, the introduction of the Xbrowser system, a unique general-purpose hypertext/hypermedia system combining high-quality text formatting using TEX* or LATEX with author-controlled support for event-level protocol analysis and computer-assisted instruction. Second, an extensive ground-breaking empirical study using Xbrowser tested effects of dependence analysis and related factors on error severity and time required for successful comprehension of loop transformations relevant to both sequential and parallel program comprehension. The results show that graphical annotation of program source with dependence information as is done in the ParaScope parallel programming environment improves the time required to correctly comprehend the results of parallelizing loops, and that dependence type affects both time required for successful comprehension and severity of errors made in the attempt, with anti-dependences somewhat more problematic than flow dependences, and both much worse than output dependences, particularly for loop carried dependences. An alternative to dependence analysis based on simpler data-flow concepts was not better in either comprehension time or error severity measures, nor were parallel loop transformation shown to be more difficult to understand than equivalent sequential loop transformations for this particular task. Controlling for the previous experimental effects, GREAnalytical and Mathematics scores, SAT Mathematics scores, mathematics grade point average, number of high school and college mathematics courses, and the percentage of working time spent programming were all found to correlate to improved error and/or time performance.  This dissertation is "An empirical evaluation of dependence analysis in parallel program comprehension (Douglas M. Monk)" available for download from the Rice University Digital Scholarship Archive, https://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/16859. * TEX is a trademark of the American Mathematical Society.
    Description
    This work was also published as a Rice University thesis/dissertation: http://hdl.handle.net/1911/16859
    Citation
    Monk, Douglas M.. "An Empirical Evaluation of Dependence Analysis in Parallel Program Comprehension." (1995) https://hdl.handle.net/1911/96450.
    Type
    Technical report
    Citable link to this page
    https://hdl.handle.net/1911/96450
    Rights
    You are granted permission for the noncommercial reproduction, distribution, display, and performance of this technical report in any format, but this permission is only for a period of forty-five (45) days from the most recent time that you verified that this technical report is still available from the Computer Science Department of Rice University under terms that include this permission. All other rights are reserved by the author(s).
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Collections
    • Computer Science Technical Reports [245]

    Home | FAQ | Contact Us | Privacy Notice | Accessibility Statement
    Managed by the Digital Scholarship Services at Fondren Library, Rice University
    Physical Address: 6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005
    Mailing Address: MS-44, P.O.BOX 1892, Houston, Texas 77251-1892
    Site Map

     

    Searching scope

    Browse

    Entire ArchiveCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsTypeThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsType

    My Account

    Login

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    Home | FAQ | Contact Us | Privacy Notice | Accessibility Statement
    Managed by the Digital Scholarship Services at Fondren Library, Rice University
    Physical Address: 6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005
    Mailing Address: MS-44, P.O.BOX 1892, Houston, Texas 77251-1892
    Site Map