PCN Version 2.0

Appeared in Volume 8/3, August 1993

PCN (Program Composition Notation) is a parallel programming system designed to improve the productivity of scientists and engineers using parallel computers. It provides a simple language for specifying concurrent algorithms, interfaces to Fortran and C, a portable toolkit that allows applications to be developed on a workstation or small parallel computer and run unchanged on supercomputers, and integrated debugging and performance analysis tools. PCN was developed at Argonne National Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology. It has been used to develop a wide variety of applications, in areas such as climate modeling, fluid dynamics, computational biology, chemistry, and circuit simulation.

Currently we supply configurations for the following machines:
Workstation Networks: Sun 4, NeXT, IBM RS/6000, SGI Iris Multicomputers: Intel iPSC/860, Intel Touchstone DELTA Shared Memory Machines: Sequent Symmetry running Dynix (not PTX)

PCN is not difficult to port, and we will supply configurations for other machines in the future.

PCN is in the public domain. You can obtain the complete distribution by anonymous FTP from:
ftp://info.mcs.anl.gov/pub/pcn/pcn_v2.0.tar.Z

The PCN distribution contains all source code, installation instructions, a users guide in both LateX and Postscript formats, and examples.

For further information on PCN, please send email to: pcn@mcs.anl.gov

Or contact:

Ian Foster
Email: foster@mcs.anl.gov
Tel: 708 252 4619

Steve Tuecke
Email: tuecke@mcs.anl.gov
Tel: 708 252 8711