Algorithmic skeletons meeting grids

In this work, we discuss an extension of the set of principles that should guide the future design and development of skeletal programming systems, as defined by Cole in his “pragmatic manifesto” paper. The three further principles introduced are related to the ability to exploit existing sequential code as well as to the ability to target typical modern architectures, those made out of heterogeneous processing elements with dynamically varying availability, processing power and connectivity features such as grids or heterogeneous, non-dedicated clusters. We outline two skeleton based programming environments currently developed at our university and we discuss how these environments adhere to the proposed set of principles. Eventually, we outline how some other relevant, well-known skeleton environments conform to the same set of principles.