A Template Based Visual Programming Environment for C3I Applications

A central concern with developing parallel C3I applications is to preserve the investments made in the initial system design and implementation while leveraging technological advances to improve program performance. Program templates have demonstrated significant promise in reducing costs for the design and matinenance of parallel software. The goal of this SBIR is to create a visual, interactive, template based system for developing parallel C3I applications. This framework, to be called C3IKIT for C3I Kernels Implemented as Templates, will have the following characteristics: a library of kernel implementations that can be adapted, quickly and with high quality assurance, for dissimilar architectures; a graphical interface that allows the library to be searched for appropriate templates, to parameterize these templates for different architectures and within different application contexts, that supports the composition of a kernel with other kernels or C3I applications, and that is extensible to other kernels and parallel architectures in the C3I domain. Phase I of this proposal will produce a detailed requirement analysis of C3IKIT. To demonstrate feasibility of C3IKIT, we will develop prototype implementations of two kernel applications from the C3I Prarllel Benchmark suite (C3IPBS) that is currently under development at Rome Laboratory.