The Cilk-M Project - SuperTech Wiki

In a dynamically multithreaded (dthreaded for short) language such as Cilk, since multiple children of a function may exist simultaneously, the runtime system employs a cactus stack to support multiple stack views for all the active children simultaneously. In all known software implementations of cactus stacks, however, transitioning from serial code (using a linear stack) to parallel code (using a cactus stack) is problematic, because the type of stack impacts the calling conventions used to allocate activation frames and pass arguments. One could recompile the serial code to use a cactus stack, but this strategy is not feasible if the codebase includes legacy or third-party binaries for which the source is not available. We call the property of allowing arbitrary calling between parallel and serial code --- including especially legacy (and third-party) serial binaries --- serial-parallel reciprocity, or SP-reciprocity for short. It turns out that there seems to be an inherent trade-

In a dynamically multithreaded (dthreaded for short) language such as Cilk, since multiple children of a function may exist simultaneously, the runtime system employs a cactus stack to support multiple stack views for all the active children simultaneously. In all known software implementations of cactus stacks, however, transitioning from serial code (using a linear stack) to parallel code (using a cactus stack) is problematic, because the type of stack impacts the calling conventions used to allocate activation frames and pass arguments. One could recompile the serial code to use a cactus st