MRPC: A High Performance RPC System for MPMD Parallel Computing

MRPC is an RPC system that is designed and optimized for MPMD parallel computing. Existing systems based on standard RPC incur an unnecessarily high cost when used on high-performance multi-computers, limiting the appeal of RPC-based languages in the parallel computing community. MRPC combines the efficient control and data transfer provided by Active Messages (AM) with a minimal multithreaded runtime system that extends AM with the features required to support MPMD. This approach introduces only the necessary runtime RPC overheads for an MPMD environment. MRPC has been integrated into Compositional C++ (CC++), a parallel extension of C++ that offers an MPMD programming model. Basic RPC performance in MRPC is within a factor of two from those of Split-C, a highly tuned SPMD language, and other messaging layers. CC++ applications perform within a factor of two to six from comparable Split-C versions, which represent an order of magnitude improvement over previous CC++ implementations.