Efficient implementation of a portable parallel programming model for image processing

This paper describes a domain specific programming model for execution on parallel and distributed architectures. The model has initially been targeted at the application area of image processing, though the techniques developed may be more generally applicable to other domains where an algebraic or library‐based approach is common. Efficiency is achieved by the concept of a self‐optimising class library of primitive image processing operations, which allows programs to be written in a high level, algebraic notation and which is automatically parallelised (using an application‐specific data parallel approach). The class library is extended automatically with optimised operations, generated by a transformation system, giving improved execution performance. The parallel implementation of the model described here is based on MPI and has been tested on a C40 processor network, a quad‐processor Unix workstation, and a network of PCs running Linux. Timings are included to indicate the impact of the automatic optimisation facility (rather than the effect of parallelisation). Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.