Parallel programming models using parallel tasks have shown to be successful for increasing scalability on medium-size homogeneous parallel systems. Several investigations have shown that these programming models can be extended to hierarchical and heterogeneous systems which will dominate in the future. In this chapter, the authors discuss parallel programming models with parallel tasks and describe these programming models in the context of other approaches for mixed task and data parallelism. They discuss compiler-based as well as library-based approaches for task programming and present extensions to the model which allow a flexible combination of parallel tasks and an optimization of the resulting communication structure.
A Case Study of Novice Programmers on Parallel Programming Models