Global Arrays Operations

Each GA operation can be categorized as a primitive operation, constructed from primitive operations, or providing access to third party software.

The primitive operations that are invoked collectively by all processes are:

• create a distributed array, controlling alignment and distribution;
• duplicate an array with properties of another existing array;
• destroy an array;
• synchronize.

The primitive operations that may be invoked in MIMD style by any process are:

• fetch, store and accumulate into a rectangular patch of global array;
• gather and scatter;
• atomic read and increment;
• efficient access to local elements of global array (by a pointer).

The list of BLAS-like data-parallel operations on sections or entire global arrays includes:

• vector operations including: dot product, scale, add;
• matrix operations including: symmetrize, transpose, multiplication.

The MIMD operations in GA toolkit are truly one-sided communication i.e., the data transfer does not require explicit cooperation of remote processor that owns the data.

Global Arrays operations have Fortran, C++, and C programming interfaces.

More details, including the Fortran API, can be accessed through an alphabetical index of the supported GA operations.

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