DIF - A Language for Dataflow Graph Specification and Exchange

Dataflow specification of applications for parallel computing was established over four decades ago and has been richly developed in academic research efforts. Defense Department R&D programs have resulted in computer programming languages andsupporting software tools for both military and COTS hardware systems. Despite clearly demonstrated suitability and productivity gains, data flow programming has not been widely adopted by the parallel computing industry sector. One clear impediment toacceptance of this powerful programming technology is the lack of an industrial standard language. The existence of an industry wide standard data flow language is necessary precondition to industrial acceptance of data flow software technology forproduction code development. Research in the development of a data flow language, Dataflow Interchange Format (DIF), supporting non proprietary exchange of data flow graph specifications has been conducted at the University of Maryland. This researchprovides a technology base for development of a common data flow graph specification language capable of becoming the enabling standard for broad industrial use of dataflow software technology. This proposal is forfull development of DIF as a potential standard and its supported open source distribution.DIF is expected to immediately provide high performance computing system production code developers the means to save and reuse high value data flow application specifications in a vendor neutral form and support from vendor and academic software tools.Early in phase II, DIF will support combined use of U.C. Berkeley''s Ptolemy and MCCI's Autocoding Toolset with its MATLAB import capability for parallel application designand prototyping. This capability is expected to be immediately useful in DARPA PCA and HPCS research programs and broadly useful in all DoD and commercial high performance computing based programs.