Functional Skeletons for Parallel Coordination

In this paper we propose a methodology for structured parallel programming using functional skeletons to compose and coordinate concurrent activities written in a standard imperative language. Skeletons are higher order functional forms with built-in parallel behaviour. We show how such forms can be used uniformly to abstract all aspects of a parallel program's behaviour including data partitioning, placement and rearrangement (communication) as well as computation. Skeletons are naturally data parallel and are capable of expressing computation and coordination at a higher level of abstraction than other process oriented coordination notations. Examples of the application of this methodology are given and an implementation technique outlined.