Asynchronous programming with Tarragon

Tarragon is an actor-based programming model and library for implementing parallel scientific applications requiring fine grain asynchronous communication. Tarragon raises the level of abstraction by encapsulating run-time services that mange the actor semantics. The workload is over-decomposed into many virtual processes called WorkUnits. WorkUnits can become ready for execution after receiving input; scheduling and communication services coordinate WorkUnit execution and management. In order to maintain balanced workloads, Tarragon automatically monitors workload distribution and redistributes as needed. Tarragon is novel in its support for meta data describing run-time virtual process structures used to manage actor semantics. This meta data may be used to guide run time services policies in order to optimize performance. We are currently applying Tarragon to the MCell cell microphysiology simulator and are considering other applications as well, such as sparse matrix linear algebra.