Usage
  • 161 views
  • 112 downloads

Enterprise in Context: Assessing the Usability of Parallel Programming Environments

  • Author(s) / Creator(s)
  • Technical report TR93-09. The explosive growth of commercial and academic interest in parallel and distributed computing during the past fifteen years has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the number of available parallel programming systems, and in the variety of approaches to parallel programming being taken. However, little or no work has been done to compare or evaluate different approaches. This paper is a step toward rectifying this situation. We present several criteria by which parallel programming systems might be quantitatively evaluated, and assess the importance and measurability of each. Of these criteria, we feel that usability is the most important but also the least frequently quantified. For illustration, we compare the Enterprise system under development at the University of Alberta, and the approach it embodies, with several existing systems and their approaches. We also predict the results we expect from these comparisons. Finally, we argue that while the cost of performing quantitative measurements of usability might seem large, the cost of not performing them, as borne by a group which selects an inappropriate or low-performing programming system, is likely to be much larger. | TRID-ID TR93-09

  • Date created
    1993
  • Subjects / Keywords
  • Type of Item
    Report
  • DOI
    https://doi.org/10.7939/R3Z31NV4Z
  • License
    Attribution 3.0 International