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Chapel was one of the three language chosen by DARPA in early 2010s (late 2000s?) to be the potential future of HPC (the other two being Fortress and X10). I t

Chapel was one of the three language chosen by DARPA in early 2010s (late 2000s?) to be the potential future of HPC (the other two being Fortress and X10). I think the idea was to fund these languages, allow the developers to throw them at the supercomputers, have a multi-year shoot out, and pick the one that wins out. I'm not sure what happened to the findings/results (feel free to chime in). What I do know is that I've been in the HPC application side for almost 15 years and not one of the big projects I'm involved with use any of these, or any other "new" HPC languages. The go-to languages/frameworks are the same: C/C++/Fortran, combined with OpenMP/MPI (MPI includes networking, but use of separate networking frameworks is also an option), and Cuda for GPUs (maybe very occasional OpenCL), with python being the massive success as the glue between all the system-level languages/frameworks. And now with the advent of tensor computing, the paradigm appears to be shifting once more (maybe not a shift, but one more item in the laundray list of heterogenous hardware). Go read the overview, new features, whatever on the linked Chapel website: not a single mention of GPU. That's cz Chapel/Fortress/X10 were conceived/developed around the time GPGPU was just taking off. Nobody saw GPGPU coming and it has taken the HPC world by storm. And yet, after more than a decade, the "new HPC language" website has zero mention of GPUs. What a shame. I'm not saying the new HPC languages are overrated. But I do believe the promise of an HPC language hasn't panned out, and yet at the same time new computer-architecture/hardware paradigms keep emerging which the "new" HPC languages {were never designed for, never foresaw}.

auggierose 7y ago
Same opinion here. Parallel first language, and no GPU support??
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Many HPC worloads are MPI first, and then something else later. Still there is ongoing GPU support work, see sibling comment.
  - mppf 7y ago
    Right, GPU support is very important to us and we expect to make something satisfying. We just havn't been able to prioritize it yet.
pjmlp 7y ago
Like with C in systems programming, the targeted users must be willing to try new ways, and most aren't. Here is your GPU mention, "Targeting GPUs and Other Hierarchical Architectures in Chapel" https://chapel-lang.org/presentations/SC11/05-sidelnik-gpu.pdf https://chapel-lang.org/presentations/SC11/05-sidelnik-gpu.p... "GPUIterator: bridging the gap between Chapel and GPU platforms" https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3329722.3330142 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3329722.3330142
jabl 7y ago
As interesting as Chapel is on the surface, I think the basic problem with it, and Fortress/X10 too, is that they are so niche that they're never going to get critical mass.

auggierose 7y ago

Same opinion here. Parallel first language, and no GPU support??

pjmlp 7y ago
Many HPC worloads are MPI first, and then something else later. Still there is ongoing GPU support work, see sibling comment.
- mppf 7y ago
  Right, GPU support is very important to us and we expect to make something satisfying. We just havn't been able to prioritize it yet.

pjmlp 7y ago

Like with C in systems programming, the targeted users must be willing to try new ways, and most aren't. Here is your GPU mention, "Targeting GPUs and Other Hierarchical Architectures in Chapel" https://chapel-lang.org/presentations/SC11/05-sidelnik-gpu.pdf https://chapel-lang.org/presentations/SC11/05-sidelnik-gpu.p... "GPUIterator: bridging the gap between Chapel and GPU platforms" https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3329722.3330142 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3329722.3330142

jabl 7y ago

As interesting as Chapel is on the surface, I think the basic problem with it, and Fortress/X10 too, is that they are so niche that they're never going to get critical mass.