Lorin Hochstein, Jeff Carver, Forrest Shull, Sima Asgari, Victor R. Basili, Jeffrey K. Hollingsworth, Marvin Zelkowitz. "Parallel Programmer Productivity: A Case Study of Novice Parallel Programmers". International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking and Storage (SC'05). November 2005. Best student paper award.
In developing High-Performance Computing (HPC) software, time to solution is an important metric. This metric is comprised of two main components: The human effort required developing the software, plus the amount of machine time required to execute it. To date, little empirical work has been done to study the first component: the human effort required and the effects of approaches and practices that may be used to reduce it. In this paper, we describe a series of studies that address this problem. We instrumented the development process used in multiple HPC classroom environments. We analyzed data within and across such studies, varying factors such as the parallel programming model used and the application being developed, to understand their impact on the development process.